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Yet

             There is a time for everything  and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,  a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

 

            I’m writing this the day before I change ages, and you’re reading it the day after. Birthdays have been a challenge for me for as long as I remember. As I look back at my life, I regret all I’ve failed to do each year. By now, I should be so much more mature, accomplished, successful, wise, loving, helpful… This year, it seems as if my body (and my mind) just can’t keep up with the demands I put on it. The reality probably is that my body and mind have never been able to keep up, but we remember what suits our purposes at the time. It’s just that there is so much more I want to do now. I’m not a bigger idiot, or a greater slob, or a worse worker or person than I was.

            In fact, the past several years have been great years. But I’m looking at another of those optical illusions I wrote about recently. This one is a picture of all that must, should, and could be done, along with all that I’d like to do, and because I have not accomplished them this morning – because I won’t have accomplished them by the time you read these words – I am a failure.

            It's humiliating to think or write, but it’s rather like an eighteen-year-old wailing that she’s not married yet.

            Part of maturity is not wailing over “not yet” and “not _____ yet.” In fact, part of maturity probably comes down to falling in love with “yet.” It may be a long-distance love affair, with infrequent meetings

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