A Life Spent on Love
It has been too long since I’ve posted here. In the last three weeks, I have seen my parents again for the first time in forever, gotten together with friends, done the usual e-learning thing, and worked my butt off for an upcoming PTA fundraiser. There were many moments over these last two weeks, as I was doing something absurd like hot gluing really tiny doll masks or driving across the county to deliver something to a remote teacher, where all I could think was, “What am I even doing right now?”
There’s an absurdity to adulthood that I think we all try to block out. Unless we’re among the rich and famous, we are both trying to create a full and rich life and also trying to muddle through the ridiculous crap that being a grown up brings. One minute, I’m talking to a friend about how we are trying to empower our children to become independent, and the next, I’m looking at an odd stain on the couch and really, really hoping it’s applesauce and not dog puke.
And then there’s the grown-up stuff I really should be doing but the whiny child inside me just does not want to. So many emails. So many calls. So many ridiculous details that are really urgent but, my goodness, I am exhausted. (Probably from all the hot gluing.)
What am I even doing right now? A phrase from the aforementioned Every Moment Holy book of liturgies comes to mind. (I lent the book to a friend and so I can’t find which liturgy this is from or even if my brain maybe just made it up? Sometimes I am betrayed by my own memory.)
“There is value in a life spent on love.”
I don’t think I will ever accomplish anything outside of the ordinary. I don’t even know if I want to, given the sacrifices that requires. But in our celebrity-obsessed, success-driven society, being ordinary is worse than being immoral. At least immoral people get their 15 minutes of fame. And in my weakest, most tired moments, I look around at the somewhat ridiculous things I am spending my time on and wonder if maybe I should be aiming higher?
And then those words come to me. So much of what we humans done is unseen, unnoticed. We spend our days like money, passing one bill, one day, over at a time. But what if what we’re buying is a healthy community? What if what we’re buying is the joy and comfort of the people around us? What if what we’re buying is a life that is not glamorous, but rather deep, and rich, and rooted?
I don’t know if writing a stupid joke on a note to send to school with my kids changes anything about the world at all. I spend 5 minutes a day doing it, and if we do the math, that will be at least 8 days of my life spent on those notes before they leave home. But if it just part of a tapestry of care, and part of a discipline that takes me out of a world focused on external validation and puts me into the humility of the mundane, then maybe that is 8 days well spent.
We’re moving back into a world of people who have felt deeply alone or deeply overwhelmed for a long time. What better way to spend this next season of our lives, than on love?
