Cheryl Ries

When we are young, we look at our lives ahead as endless, infinite expanses of unfulfilled promise.  We see days stretched out before us as limitless miles left in our tanks, nothing to restrict us, nor to restrain our momentum.  We don't consider ramifications, complications, situations, nor implications.  We only take one day after another like we've all the time in the world!

Somewhere along the way, hopefully later rather than sooner, we begin to see small foretellings of the possibilities that life is truly not so infinite.  Some elderly relative dies, or we hear of a tragedy which has befallen someone near to us, but it's still not enough to force reality into our heads and hearts.  We still thrive in our carefree youth, denying the adult notion that mortality truly exists for us. 

Soon we reach a time when responsibilities of life seep in enough, that we start to pay attention more.  We've our instant communications to remind us that in fact, life is ebbing all around us like vast tidal pools, life comes and goes, but still maybe not for our realization, to us.  Maybe we haven't yet felt the sting of personal tragedy, nor prolonged illness or disease threatening at our doorways.  Perhaps we have been blessed with intolerably good health and have a feeling of impenetrable well-being.  We are invinsible, even though we surely see others are not.  It's our good fortune and God's blessings.

Oh, but then it comes, the threat of all threats.  We find the impenetrable barriers of our happy-go-lucky walls have in fact been knocked a bit, something foreign has entered our safety zones.  We taste illness, we taste death, we understand mortality, usually at a time when we start to sense our own coming rapidly through life's progression.  We can see, along with our newly formed lines of character, which mark the triumphs and failings of life upon our faces, our bodies seem to resemble those of our elders, those of our parents, or grandparents, something we just cannot understand.  Where did our time go?  How do we now relate to time as our enemy?

It is then, when time is daring you to see it as a finite human measure, that we must find what we are made of.  We must conquer our fears and press forward in life, bravely deciding that, in its most precious element, brevity, time is now asking, no . .  pleading with us, to be more diligent, more efficient, more appreciative and less wasteful.  Time is demanding us to mature along beside it, knowing full well the most important concept of life other than love is to appreciate this gift of time!   It is precious, rare, and no matter which part of life's spectrum you are standing, it is an unseen commodity which one must assume to be finite.  When we are young, we make our choices without the benefit of wisdom, when it finally comes, it is crucial to make certain the wisdom learned through our life lessons didn't arrive too late to make a difference!