Living Fully

Each day we live out our routine. Each day we have time gaps that allow us to do something different than on other days. But few of us alter our routines or make conscious choice to live differently or more fully than we did on other days. 

It’s OK. It’s how we humans live our lives. Routine helps us get through less pleasant tasks and obstacles. We do what we have to do. That’s the way life is. You sleep in a bed, you make it in the morning (or not!). You like to eat; you have either dishes to wash or a diner’s tab to pay. It is what it is.

For a moment, however, I want the reader to stop and cool it. I want you to pay attention to the words that follow. Fair enough?  Hear me out!

Let’s pretend for a few moments that you've just run into a major problem. You can’t ignore it. Maybe it’s a family member who has taken ill quite suddenly and a trip to the emergency room is the best option. You drop everything. You have little time to react and/or take care of other issues. You do what you have to do and make your way to the car and then off to the hospital.

At the hospital, you submit to the prevailing protocol (bureaucracy?) and let the process work. You follow orders. You watch the goings on around you. You are part of the goings on. You are a player with a role to act out; you are not directing the action. Your routine is broken. This is someone else’s field of play.

At these moments we wonder what is going on and how it will affect me, our lives, our future. We conjure the worst ends. We reject those. Now becomes a moment of value. Dear; precise somehow.  We want things to return to normal. But then the conjured thought re-enters our thinking. What if? What if things changed at this moment to the worst outcome? What then do we do with our lives? Or life?

Those moments have seminal impact. The ‘now’ is changed to a new paradigm and we see life differently.

If we have our old life back what will we do with it? Will we enjoy it more? Or just differently? Or will we slip back into the old routines and habits?

A disciplined life includes deep thinking, I think. It allows us the freedom to see things differently from time to time and to ‘try on’ new thoughts, viewpoints and practices. We grow in those moments. We become more fully human and experience things differently.

This is exciting stuff! This is exploration and discovery and change all in the same breath.

How sad there are those who cannot participate in life in this way. They see the good and bad in immutable pairings that cannot be changed. They are managed by this hierarchy. They are controlled, too. Depression is a ‘must’, you see; they have the dark abyss calling and they enter it, with some trepidation but also with familiarity. They have been here before. It is an odd home but it is home none the same. The down slope of life calls these people; and they give in to it because they know no other way to live.

We live with these people in all of our walkways of life. They are our work colleagues, our family members, neighbors, friends and fellow members of church or other organizations. They appear and disappear from time to time, not fully present or a part of us. We begin to see the cracks between their normal and ours. Then they disappear for a day, a week, maybe a month or more.

They do reappear. Sometimes sadder; sometimes wiser. They have been on a special journey whereof we know nothing.

We continue our exploration and discovery journey. We are living life openly and expectantly.

They do as well but in a cramped, dark and special place that cannot be shared. There is a wall between us, subtle at times but stark at other times. This is mental illness. This is the face of an America we do not often admit to.

Strange and lonely. But very real.

How do we help them?

January 28, 2015