Last week I attended a manufacturer’s event where we heard an economist speak about the economy. Of course, an economist spoke about the economy, right? In her talk, she mentioned how the average farmer will go out and harvest just forty times in their lifetime. (I am sure the family-owned farm does typically include more harvests than that and in other parts of the world, you can get two harvests in a year.) I got hung up on that comment and how finite it makes our lives seem. But we don’t treat our lives, in this way, we treat our life as if it were infinite. Returning to the forty harvests, it also made it feel like some box to check as you go along. You can literally count down your life.
In the last year, I have read or heard a lot about this idea of life’s finiteness. Not only are our lives limited to a number of harvests but the number of Christmas’s we celebrate, and the summer breaks we enjoy. Additionally, if you live away from your family as I do, your time with them is even more so limited. The number of times I have left to see my mom and dad could and likely are less than twenty visits.
Let’s do some math. In my case, I usually see my parents once a year. They being over 60 and the average life expectancy for an American is 76 means that on average I have about 16 visits left with my family. That’s nothing, no time at all.
Imagine that for a minute. What if you had only sixteen more times to see your loved ones? The family you see every day, but there were only twenty more times.
It is scary.
What is the point of this depressing thought on this Sunday morning? Life is not infinite so we need to stop treating it that way. The sun rises on our day only so many times. Make the most of the small windows of time, and the small conversations. And by all means, try so very hard to be present. I struggle with this one so much.