Why Does It Take So Long?

After six decades of breathing I am at a place where I finally think I have a few things figured out. Very few, but a few. Still there are way more things that I don’t grasp and still more, much more, that I am sure I am not even aware of their existence. If knowledge, learning, and experience are so important why do they seemingly take so long? If I pause for a moment and waste some time thinking about living twenty years ago but with the knowledge and experience I have now - naw! Don’t seem to really be interested in wasting my time or spirit with such an endeavor. It really serves no purpose that has any consequence for me.

Learning is something I‘ve been told is a lifelong adventure. I always pictured a metaphor of a large bucket that one begins life with and it is empty. As we move through life our experiences and learnings and revelations get added to the bucket and one day the bucket might get filled. Maybe even filled to the point of continually overflowing. I am fairly certain that that is a poor metaphor. It just doesn’t work that way.

I have noticed that life seems to come at us and we relearn the same lessons about just a few things and then we relearn them again and again. The answers we so want to cling to and hold as absolutes are but another attempt of our raging against the reality of change, of movement, of or dance of impermanence. We continue to desire some form or fashion of immortality. This has been our M.O. since the Garden of Eden.

Our raging against impermanence may be the motivation, the impetus of our standard living practices that we cheer, promote, display and adore. How long has humanity engaged in this rage? And, has there actually been any degree of success? Has anyone you know “got it all figured out” and slide into home plate living forever?

How do you rage against your reality of impermanence? Do you attempt to figure it out believing that if you can just manage to know the right things somehow you can keep change and death at bay? How do you rage forward for false security (no such thing as true security). Do you waste your life and living earning, creating wealth, that is actually only a pastime as wealth has never benefited anyone against impermanence.

Perhaps we are in a false fight? All human raging for more knowledge, more security, more experiences, more happiness, more health, more of anything only results in the same exact ends and always has and always will. We rage against reality. What might life look like without the rage? Would life as we know it now even be possible?

I’m hearing the words of Jesus when He asks, “Why do you rage so? Look at the birds of the air.”