Birthday

I’m 43-years old today. I have a sense of urgency these days. My time, energy and health are being depleted quickly. I feel as if I’m ‘over-the-hill’ and gaining momentum. Every morning, I get up to a full day with so many good intentions. I dawdle a bit, indulge myself with a few pleasurable pursuits, and suddenly realize it’s already afternoon. And in this afternoon stage of life, I frequently think: So much left to accomplish…yet so little time.

Each day in my past has been a learning experience. It has shaped who I am. No regrets. Yet, there is this push from deep within me, a pressure to learn more, a tension of things not yet expressed.

“Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or…a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” (Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl)

I stand in this gap between who I am and who I am to become. I shall press on.

“By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back. So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us.” (Phil. 3:12-15 MSG)