This will be the last Super Bowl reference until next year, I promise. As we sat 2 1/2 weeks ago in front of the TV waiting for the game to begin, my brother said, “I can’t believe this is finally happening after all these weeks of waiting!” And I think we did watch and enjoy and experience very single minute (of the game, not the half-time show, which I turned off midway through).
This failure to pay attention when a looked-for event happens can drain the pleasure from something very minor, such as the Super Bowl or the very last episode of Downton Abbey (for which I plan to hold a party). If you’re going to watch it anyway you might as well make the most of it. It would be a shame after all the agonies we’ve suffered along with the Crawleys not to really experience having everything wrapped up. “Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” as the book of Ecclesiastes says. Pretty good advice. (I think I can safely say that Edith will end up with Bertie after all and that Thomas will end up butling for Mary. And Isobel will marry Lord Merton. Don’t know who on earth these people are? There will be years of re-runs, so never fear.)
Far more vital to pay attention to events of lasting importance, of course. It’s very common for a bride to say that she doesn’t remember anything about her actual wedding; after all the months of preparation and planning she’s just so exhausted and distracted that she can’t enjoy what she’s worked so hard to accomplish. A friend of mind says that she made a deliberate point of paying attention during her own wedding, as she was very conscious of the danger that she might indeed miss out on the whole thing. And I so sympathized with the friends and family of Adnan Syed, the young man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, as they finally experienced something they (and he) had been wanting to happen for 15 years: hearing Asia McClain testify in court that she can give Adnan an alibi for the time when according to the state’s case he was killing Hae Min Lee. The sense of unreality must have been overwhelming for everyone as they thought, ‘I can’t believe we’re really here and that this is really happening!’ (Don’t know who these people are either? You can, if you’d like, read my post about the case here.)
I attend a wonderful Bible study on Wednesday mornings, and our teaching director’s husband had a liver transplant yesterday. He’s been ill for at least a year with “idiopathic non-alcoholic cirrhosis,” been hospitalized numerous times and come close to death. Yesterday’s surgery started at 5:00 AM with the removal of one-third of the donor’s liver and then its transplantation. Immediate family spent the day at the hospital, of course. How hard it is to live through something like that minute by minute, experiencing it fully! Sometimes we just have to escape, of course: no one can sustain intense emotion for very long. I learned that myself during the weeks leading up to and during my son’s cancer treatment two years ago. But as I say about Gideon’s first week in the hospital, when we really didn’t know what was going to happen, “It was the most horrible, and the most wonderful, week of my life.”
What could you experience more fully? How will you plan so that you can do so?
Wonderful post and great points!