On the way to school, the youngest burrowed his head into my arm. “I don’t like that you’re getting older.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you’re one year closer to death.”
“There it is.” That’s my kid. Very sweet. Very sensitive. Brutally, bordering on inappropriately blunt. “Well, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Getting younger?” He thinks for a second. “Oh…dying.”
“Yeah, you can’t get younger.” I scratch him on the head. “And hopefully I have a ways to go. Ideally, I’ll still be kicking around when you turn 43.”
“You’ll be 73. So that’s reasonable”
“Yeah.”
“Granddad will be 103.”
“Less likely. But maybe. I hope he is as long as he’s happy.”
“And healthy. Happy, healthy, and alive.” Then he goes into a bit from an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine which makes me laugh.
Birthdays, as my oldest posited this morning, are kind of weird when you get older. Or at least they morph into something different from the second Christmas-esque excitement when you’re a kid. Because there does get to be that point where it creeps into your mind that you are a year closer to death. And that forces you take stock of your life which is a hit-or-miss affair due to being human’s volatility.
After 42 started in the midst of a deeply meaningful chaplain residency, it turned into a bit of a frustrating, lonely year. Eight months without job will do that to you along with the anxiety-inducing state of the world. About a month ago, I began a part-time job as an administrative assistant in the Spiritual Care department of the hospital in which I did my residency. I am grateful for the work and that I am being of service in a world that does some good. But I have to regularly swat away the idea that a 43 year-old ordained minister with a Master’s degree working a part time admin assistant job is a bit of a failure.
But it’s better than a lot of the alternatives.
As I am sure I have mentioned before, the motto of my home state of South Carolina is Dum spiro spero. “While I breathe, I hope.” Memorizing that in 3rd grade social studies might have saved my life. At the very least, it serves as a reminder that as long as I am alive there is hope. It does not guarantee that things are going to get better. Indeed there are forces in this world that are going to work in opposition to that hope. But if there is breath in your lungs then you have a fighting chance. That is something.
So if you are frustrated, angry, sense that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, or just feel off, remember Dum spiro spero. Or as the song that appropriately chimed out in our car as I dropped the youngest off at school said, “Everything’s not lost.” We’re still here. While we breathe, we hope.