This column began when I heard a minister use it in his sermon. I suppose there are many answers to this question depending on your point of view, but his answer stuck with me.
He reported the answer but cleaned it up slightly. Life, according to his source is: One D… thing after another. (He used the word ‘danged’ which is a more acceptable Sunday morning word than the original.) But it fits.
Mostly life is rather predictable, you have a ‘normal’ home life, a job, interact with fellow workers and friends, read a little, make the commute home and greet the family, eat, watch TV and retire. And the beat goes on as we anticipate life with some moderate exceptions for most of the week and then the weekend arrives with more unsurprising routines although more oriented to family activities and perhaps Sunday will find the doors of the church welcoming. So goes life if we were to write the script, but assuredly we do not always have charge of that detail. The script is hardly ever what we thought it would be. And that is what makes life full of surprises because we never know what is in store tomorrow.
For instance, the alarm fails to go off and the routine is upset; the child complains of being sick and wanting to stay home from school, the dog continues to bark unceasingly at something in the back yard, the weather report calls for rain but the umbrella is at the office, the driver of the carpool calls to say he was having trouble and would be late, there is no milk for the cereal, a shoe string breaks on your shoe and there is no replacement, there is a call from a parent who wants to come for a visit for the weekend and bring his pet, the computer is down again, the child throws up and a decision has to be made about a sitter for the day, the newspaper is on top of the porch, the important report to be given today is still not complete, the wife has to leave early for an early meeting and Dad is the final decision maker authority.
And that is just before leaving home.
The office machine needed to finish the important report is out of ink, the office secretary is on vacation and the temp replacement is lost in a maze of backed up telephone calls, there is a fire drill and the office has to be evacuated, the boss is irritable, the air conditioner is making a funny sound, lunch was left on the kitchen counter, the report is finally given and it was well received with compliments from the now smiling boss. The sitter called and the son is well and is playing outside. The point is that life is one danged thing after another. But in retrospect, would you really want it to be any other way? What if you had a crystal ball and could see in the future for the remainder of your life? Would you really want to know about what life would actually bring your way? I read recently that scientists now have tests that can be given to a young person and the test can reasonably predict if you will be susceptible to a life
threatening illness, cancer, when you reach middle age. Would anyone actually want to worry about that for the decades until it happened?
So in a sense we should be glad that life presents us with unknown and unforeseen circumstances which one could argue gives life an element of mystery, meaning and yes, a little excitement.
What is life? It is one ‘damnged’ thing after another..for which we can be thankful that it is not programmed.
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Bill Lee, PO Box 128, Hamer, SC 29547