About Time
By: Rebekah Dell
Every year I have the opportunity to observe a group of our student leaders challenged to give an impromptu two-minute speech describing their “legacy day,” a single day that will define their life and legacy. As if impromptu speaking doesn’t provoke enough fear and trembling, they have the monumental task of defining their legacy. Over the years, students have talked about family milestones, marriage, firstborn babies, final athletic competitions, and the realization of a major goal. Always beautiful, deeply personal, and thought-provoking, each story shared and hope articulated challenges me to ask myself how I would respond to the same challenge.
I’ll admit my secret relief over not being responsible for answering. Even as a woman in my 30s with added life experience and perspective, I find the prompt intimidating and overwhelming, albeit compelling. As I sat and listened to a group of students answer this question in January, I was struck by the simple truth that our lives do not hinge on a single day.
Our legacy is built through a life of days. This is not a revolutionary idea, but my reflections after that realization are what I want to share with you. It’s a natural tendency to live in anticipation as we imagine future momentous moments or days. The challenge occurs when the experience or emotion falls short of the vision, which is often a reality far more than expected or hoped. Graduation day, the first day of the dream job, a wedding day, and the birth of a baby are all special, but we don’t always experience them in the ways we anticipate. We aren’t entirely different individuals as a result. Sometimes this greets us with surprise and even disappointment.
Growing up, I would mentally elevate future days, life transitions, and unrealized hopes. I was confident I would feel like an adult when I made it to college. Sound familiar? I was sure I would know my purpose and direction when I graduated college. I saw life as a series of defining accomplishments and milestones, certain those milestones would be significant and life-altering. I would feel happier. I would be happier! But, more often than not, it didn’t hold true. And not because something was wrong.
As I write, I am comfortable with the reality that I’ve lived many “big” days and experienced many milestones, some joy-filled and some challenging. And as I consider future milestones, I’ve asked myself “Will this be it?”, “Will things be different and distinct after this?”, “Will this be a defining legacy day?”. And I know the answer, it’s “no”.
Tim, the protagonist in the movie About Time, wrestles with some of these same questions as he moves back and forth between past experiences and his present life. The beautiful simplicity of his conclusion is striking. He says,
“And in the end, I think I’ve learned the final lesson from my travels in time, and I’ve even gone one step further than my father did. The truth is I now don’t travel back at all, not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
Our lives are not built on a resume of accomplishments. Joy doesn’t hinge on checking certain boxes or meeting the right person. The days, experiences, and relationships that have most defined my life (up to this point!) are those I never could have anticipated or scripted. Some of you may experience life-altering days. That day (or series of days) may define all those that follow. Rarely are these the days we expect or plan.
I’m not saying choices and accomplishments don’t matter—they do. Thinking critically and prayerfully about the days we live and the life we build matters deeply. But here’s the problem: if we are always just trying to get to what is next, always hoping for what we think will make us happier or living for a legacy day, we can easily miss all the days that make a legacy life.
This is the truth I could finally articulate as I listened to the student presentations on that cold January day. The beauty in embracing our God-given lives is not in our accomplishments or the number of milestones, it is in the daily process of savoring today for the unique gift it holds. Each day, every season holds opportunities, joys, challenges, and relationships we may miss if we do not grab hold of them now. If we are always looking with hope and expectation for what is next, what amazing things, things right in front of us, are we missing? What lessons and joys do today hold that might be gone tomorrow?
Set goals and prepare for the future, but don’t let that come at the expense of losing present opportunities. Live a life defined by embracing both the ordinary and the extraordinary. Learn to be content wherever you are in life and look for opportunities that exist in the present. What can you do now that you may never get to do (or focus on in the same way) in another phase of life? What friendships can you cultivate? What adventures can you embrace? Which simple moments can you savor? What dream can you chase?
To quote Tim as I close, “We’re all traveling through time together, every day of our lives. All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable ride.” Live your days, big or small, in a way that builds a legacy life.
