She's sitting in that chair again. It's 7:00 this evening and she's already in her nightgown. Watching “Wheel of Fortune.” Again. By herself again. It takes a strong woman to keep on living after her husband of fifty years leaves her all alone with his death. It's been five years now and it makes you wonder what life is all about. And with this question a lot of people come up empty.
How do you keep living? Half of yourself is torn away never to be touched or held or loved again until the forevermore reunites old friends. You are left in the fading dusk of your years and the greatest portion of your life is locked away in either the past or the grave. Your friends and family are all firmly entrenched in the lives they've been living for years, and their sincere condolences somehow never translated into renewed life for you. You are bereft of the energy and the drive to just get up and go. To go do something-- anything. To explore. To discover. To create. How do you find that passion? When it's gone . . . how do you go on living?
Yet, the question is not simply for those who find themselves at the end of their lives. No, millions will ask it all around the world today. In Africa a teenage boy longingly gazes at his calendar picture of New York City-- his dream for as long as he can remember-- and, realizing he will never in his life have enough money to go there, he resigns, drops the the picture into the fire and asks the question hopelessly. An upscale apartment door in London is slowly closed as a young man watches the wife he once loved more than anything, including his precious job and portfolio, walk out of his life. And he wonders why or how he should face tomorrow and the next day and the next. There is the mother in China who looks sadly on as her two children sit eating the same rice they've eaten at every meal, and she prepares to go to work in the same factory making the same towels for the rich Americans and is there anything more to life? Is there anything worth it?
And it's the twenty year-old at a college she disagrees with about everything. And she's rolling up debt as she lives a dorm lifestyle so foreign to real life that she wonders what it's really like. The B's and C's she receives, far from consoling, are never good enough and she doesn't really even know what she wants to do with her life. So as she unpacks her bags into her dorm room after another Christmas Break, she collapses onto her bed and, staring blankly through the wall, questions why she is there-- why she is even living. And as duty binds her to her circumstances, how does she go on?
When duty is not enough, how do you find that passion that makes life worth the consciousness. How do you go on? It doesn't come with the big city or with the wife of your youth or with a job or an American lifestyle. So what is it that makes life at the top, in the middle or at the bottom worth living? What is it that brings a smile to the face of the African man sitting on a dirt floor. What satisfies the Thai fisherman who sleeps tonight on his bamboo bed with nothing but a spear and a net?
What is it that we're all really looking for? Is it love? Is it security? Is it freedom? What is it that will bring the smile of peace to our lips? What is it that we're living this life for? There is nothing wrong with asking these questions. The problem arises when the only answer we can come up is “nothing.” And if there is nothing more to this life than that which we can see and hear and grasp with our physical bodies, than there really is nothing. Because we all know this physical body will one day once again become nothing. If there is a reality, it cannot be physical. Or if it is, then this is the best it gets. Pain, death, misery, failure, hopelessness, nothing. The best it gets?
I don't believe that. I believe that there is more to this life than that which we can see and hear and grasp physically, both now and forevermore. I cannot prove it, because I cannot see it, but that's faith. My faith is built on the evidence that lies within and all around. There is more, and the best is yet to come. I believe Him. And that is enough to go on.
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