One way of describing life is growing and changing. Maybe it should only be changing, because growing, at least in the bodily sense, slows down and stops after a while.
But growing in the senses of thinking, understanding, improving, bettering, accomplishing, and achieving can continue long after physical growth ends and even while physically we are declining and diminishing.
Death means the end of all growth and development, at least as we know and experience them now. But, in a spiritual dimension, we may believe and trust that they continue in some other, yet to be experienced, way.
We sometimes joke about the incessant questioning of little children: Why is this? Where does it come from? How does it work? etc. That means they’re growing in terms of knowledge and understanding.
Hopefully, they will never stop questioning, never stop challenging, never stop growing in their thinking and understanding.
If they, if we, do reach a certain stage of life where we no longer question, challenge, grow, or change in our thinking and understanding, we are, so to speak, dying or dead!
It’s odd. We esteem and acclaim explorers, discoverers, inventors, scientists, artists, and innovators in many areas and aspects of our life but criticize dissidents, eccentrics, oddballs, nonconformists, and “heretics” (in its original meaning of people of different opinion) in others.
In the unending quest for knowledge and understanding, we sometimes get it right and we sometimes get it wrong—but, the main thing is to never stop trying. There’s nothing wrong in making mid-course corrections in the way we live our lives.
We’re not perfect, infallible, nor omniscient.
No matter how much we may achieve, how much we may understand, how much we may sacrifice, how much we may love, how much others may respond to us, it will never be enough and we will never be fully satisfied.
This is all part of the human condition. There’s no sense in lamenting the deficiencies of our past or the limitations of our present. It’s rare to learn to skate without falling down, to learn to do anything new without getting it wrong from time to time.
The very essence of our lives is growing and changing. If fear of mistakes or failures holds us back from growing or changing, we gradually are living in an unreality; we are gradually dying in more ways than one.
The greatest challenge for each of us is to learn to celebrate, rejoice, and have gladness, peace, and satisfaction in our lives—in our limited, ever changing, and imperfect lives.
Especially we need to remember, know and be grateful for the understanding, empathy, support, and love we have received throughout our lives from others—and above all from the One who created us, whose mercy and love is without limits, and whose providence sustains and guides our lives.
Let us pray, imitating St. Ignatius of Loyola:
Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labor and not to seek any reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.
25 July 2021