LIFE IS A GIFT
I don’t know when my whole paradigm shifted, except that it was recent enough. Maybe it was in my darker hours, maybe it was in my better days. Maybe it was a little bit at a time until it came into focus. Maybe it was after another Henri Nouwen book, or another play-through of Maggie Rogers’ album, or when I finished East of Eden. Maybe it was in a conversation with a best friend. Maybe I was rolling with my sister’s dog in the grass (probably that, actually). Maybe it was over bitter tears of disappointment and failure. Maybe it was when my car was stolen. I don’t know.
All I know is this: I used to see this life as a game to be won, and now I see it as a gift to be received. I don’t think I would’ve been able to express that, either because I didn’t recognize it or I was ashamed of it, but looking back, it’s obvious. My life was a series of decisions and practices that were aimed at one goal: win at all costs.
“Don’t mess up, because every wrong decision is a subtraction from the final score, so make as few of those as you can. And what is life besides the final score? There is a ‘perfect Hamilton’ in the potential future, and every misstep on the path of life is less of him that you’ll be at the end. And the more of a ‘perfect Hamilton’ you are, the happier you will be and the more you will be loved by God, by people, and by yourself.” I know it sounds crazy (because it is), but that was the view of life I had: a game to win.
Like I said, I’m not sure when everything switched. I can’t say that I was sitting at my desk one day and it dawned on me. I can’t say I read it in a book. I can’t say I had a dream one night that woke me up in a cold sweat of revelation and “HALLELUJAH”— but like looking at photos of trees in Winter on a warm Spring day, I can see that something is different. Glaringly different. Life is no longer a game to me, it is a gift.
The problem with seeing life as a game is that, if I do, I will manipulate, force, cheat, and strategize my way to the top, hurting people and forsaking my well-being in the process and calling it “necessary sacrifice” to myself. “No pain no gain”, “It’s lonely at the top” or something. I don’t know. I’ll hoard my possessions, my time, and my image because these are scarce goods that must be held tightly. I’ll treat relationships as disposable, forsaking whoever doesn’t get me closer to where I want to be. And the saddest part is that I will be disappointed over, and over, and over as things continually don’t go my way. I’ll wonder, “why God?”, and then I’ll “shake it off”, don’t show it, and go back to my strategy mindset and figure out how to shift the tables, turn the tides, work my way back to where I need to be, all to be disappointed again soon enough.
Maybe I was fed up with being disappointed with myself, with people, with God, all “failing me” because they weren’t contributing to my “winner mentality”. Maybe I realized how exhausted I was, how imprisoned I was, how many people I’d hurt (intentionally and unintentionally), how disconnected I felt from God, myself, and others.
Nonetheless, the game proved broken so I stopped playing. Not all at once, and not even completely yet, but we’ve started walking a new direction. And I love it. I love the gift of life.
When life is a gift, I’m free to receive it as it comes and give it away to others. Instead of feeling the pressure to make things happen, I can let things happen. I can delight in goodness without trying to control it because there is enough goodness to go around and come back to me. I can also rest and be honest in the trouble and disappointments of life because I have released control, or at least its illusion, and I can sit with broken moments as a painful yet beautiful part of being a human.
Relationships changed, or at least, are changing. People are no longer a thing to impress and manipulate but they are all beautiful expressions of goodness who share this abundant world. They’re not my competitors, they are my family. Most of them are pure in heart, looking for fulfillment in life just like me, and not on a mission to destroy me. Thank God. When people can be themselves in my life, it says “when you have more, I have more.”
Disciplines changed, too. Now my disciplines and practices are about positioning me and those around me for as much delight as possible. Waking up at certain times, taking a Sabbath, dietary habits, making sure I stay active, putting my phone away at certain times— it all contributes to my joy, not a pursuit of perfection. Now my practices go through a simple filter: does this help me and the people around me experience more of the goodness and abundance of life in this season? And when (not if) I fail, it’s not paralyzing to my ego, it just rolls off and we keep at it because perfection isn’t the destination, wholeness is the journey.
God changed– well no– the way I experience God changed. I realize that he is the good giver of life, from the breath in my lungs to the tea in my cup to the friends around my table. God gave it all to me, and the delight of the giver is when I delight in gifts. I realized that the only thing I could, in return, give him that he doesn’t already have or couldn’t get elsewhere was my love. Now I give God my love, my self, my honesty— everything he ever wanted from me. Now, sitting with God can be for the sake of sitting with God, not about feeling something, or not feeling something, or getting things done. It can be about sitting with the author of Being and doing only that: being.
This is all a working theory. I could totally be wrong. I’m 22-years-old in writing this so there’s still plenty of time for me to become a calloused old man who yells at the kids laughing in his lawn and plenty more time for me to prove this all wrong in thousands of other ways. I don’t plan on that, though. This one will stay around, it feels like, into the ground and beyond. And while there are thousands more words we could say about this, there are also hundreds less: life is not a game, it is a gift.