Each day an adventure!
“Old age begins when someone looks back instead of forward.” (Bob Moos, September 4, Dallas Morning News.)
What a great definition!
Anticipating an event – a camping trip, a NASCAR race, a concert, the arrival of a new baby – boosts our joy quotient. Enthusiasm hums just beneath the surface, propelling us through the intervening hours or days.
Children and dogs awake joyfully each morning expecting new and happy adventures.
Sometimes in one’s life experience, it’s tempting to look back. Maybe a job, a marriage, a move, hasn’t worked out as well as we’d hoped, and we compare the results to some previous experience we remember as having been better. Or perhaps we’ve said or done something mean or cruel or worse, and eventually it niggles at us, demanding resolution.
If the mental review is for the purpose of learning and going forward, the contemplation has served a useful purpose. If, however, we look over our shoulder too long, our whole body turns around and points in that direction. It’s hard to walk forward while facing backwards. Since there’s no purpose in going back unless we can fix something, either go fix it, or stay focused ahead and expectant of good.
Pollyanna? I don’t think so. Our ability to focus forward depends on our view of God, and our relationship to that God. If this Creator is good, all-knowing, all-loving, wise, caring – why not expect good?
What a great definition!
Anticipating an event – a camping trip, a NASCAR race, a concert, the arrival of a new baby – boosts our joy quotient. Enthusiasm hums just beneath the surface, propelling us through the intervening hours or days.
Children and dogs awake joyfully each morning expecting new and happy adventures.
Sometimes in one’s life experience, it’s tempting to look back. Maybe a job, a marriage, a move, hasn’t worked out as well as we’d hoped, and we compare the results to some previous experience we remember as having been better. Or perhaps we’ve said or done something mean or cruel or worse, and eventually it niggles at us, demanding resolution.
If the mental review is for the purpose of learning and going forward, the contemplation has served a useful purpose. If, however, we look over our shoulder too long, our whole body turns around and points in that direction. It’s hard to walk forward while facing backwards. Since there’s no purpose in going back unless we can fix something, either go fix it, or stay focused ahead and expectant of good.
Pollyanna? I don’t think so. Our ability to focus forward depends on our view of God, and our relationship to that God. If this Creator is good, all-knowing, all-loving, wise, caring – why not expect good?
We don’t have to become worthy of God’s love. In fact, there's nothing we can do to earn it. Christ Jesus showed by his healing works that man in the likeness of God who is Spirit and Mind, is already worthy of the best of God’s love.
He taught his listeners about a caring Father of all mankind who demands that we not worship other gods – distractions such as sleek bodies, latest fashions, certain foods, money, power, cars, influence. And that this God worship includes fairness and kindness – starting with our fellow man.
When my friend Sam's wife passed away, he said he was tempted to go back – to an empty house, an empty life. But he realized he could, and needed to, decisively make a decision to go forward, to keep his joy. When he was tempted to bemoan the loss of a companion, he found he could choose instead to be grateful for their time together and go forward on the basis of that gratitude. To not be sad it’s over, but to be glad it happened.
He felt close to his God, and found he could lean on that warm friendship built up over the years. Sam just asked God each day, what S/He wanted him to do, that would praise and honor God as Love, God as Truth, God as good.
And so he has been – leaning, asking, doing, with joy. And facing forward.
To those leaning on the sustaining infinite,
Can we ask Him to be more?
Mary Baker Eddy
2 comments:
What a lovely post, Sandi! Really like that opening quote from Bob Moos - so relevant and will be handy to remember and share with others when they bemoan the "aging process." Thanks!
I dug that opening quote too -- thought provoking.
:)
Laura
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