As I move through what I thought was an impossible age as a child (as old as my grandfather was when he retired), I increasingly hear two voices talking about the legacy of days past. In one voice I hear the cynic coming through. Candidly, it is not very pleasant. Hidden in the words one used is frustration, regret, and often a sense of loss. Between the lines, the rhetorical question of what one could and should have done emerges and lingers without an answer. The specific words one hears often comes along the following lines.
“We live for seventy years or so (with luck we might make it to eighty), and what do we have to show for it? Trouble. Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard.” (Psalm 90.10)
If only I had seized the day, taken the risk, or done __________ (lots of variations of a missed opportunity), things would have turned out differently.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have made very different choices!
There is an alternative view that finds itself captured by Paul Anka in the song My Way. Many, including Frank Sinatra and Elvin Presley, have expressed it as their view. At its heart there are several strong statements.
“I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway.” Action, intent, and heart played out in engaged living, my way.
“Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew” when I made mistakes. From small to epic fails, “I faced it all and I stood tall”, my way.
“Regrets…too few to mention,” followed by an admission that “I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried, [and] I’ve had my fill.”
“For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught.”
One life to live, lived full and intentional, makes a difference. Both views are true. One reflects a life faced backwards, the other in the present looking forward. I love the the view of how much more living there is still to be done! It is compelling and inviting.
