What If Your Best Days Are Behind You?
It’s very possible your best days are behind you.
Many of us suspect this but don’t want to admit it. And so
it can linger inside as despair and sadness, only to come out as anger or
depression - perhaps because we often look at our lives as a series of
accomplishments and once we’ve done the best we’ve done, we’ve lost our
usefulness. What’s more, the less we’ve ‘done’ lately, the more society
relegates us to more distant spheres of irrelevance, which doesn’t help
matters.
Sunday’s Gospel says something about this.
We meet the disciples after Jesus has risen and they have
returned to their work as fishermen. While we suspect they are bewildered and
depressed because their best days are behind them, the text does not tell us
this. What it says is that they were willing to join St. Peter and go back to
work. Then, it is in the midst of this work that, again they notice Jesus, who
provides further proof and encouragement to go off and spread the good news.
If all of life is a gift, then the gift of accomplishment is
just that.
The muse that comes to the four members of the boy band,
giving them a chart-topping hit at age 17 then disappearing forever, is not a
commentary on their creativity as much as it is a sobering insight into the
capriciousness of accomplishment. If we built a business, raised incredible
children, or put in 30 years at the company, great, the muse did her work and
we are no less human, no less beloved, than we were before. We’ve been visited
by a blessing that came from outside of us and over which we had little
control.
This means we are not that blessing. We cannot take credit
for that blessing. We should not feel guilty if that blessing has moved on.
Recognizing that all creativity, originality, insight, and
ultimately accomplishment, originate outside of ourselves and visit us in its
own time, is an incredible stress reliever. It takes off the pressure and frees
us up to, like the disciples, notice Jesus in new places.
Reading
------------
At Canaan’s Edge – Taylor Branch
God is Red – Liao Yiwu
The Guidebook (NRSV Bible)
