my real life?

I haven’t had a lot of time for focused thinking and writing these days. But maybe that’s not so important. I say that because of this little something that’s been nagging at me lately.

For quite a while I’ve believed that my life began sometime in my college years. My real life. Everything before that had been my pre-life, just a preparation, gathering the necessary materials for a life, while being mostly just an accessory in someone else’s life. Then gradually I woke up and my life began. It was when I became aware, and could start making free, conscious choices of my own, when I could begin to shape my own unique identity through the actions, the path, I was choosing. My life began.

Now, though, I wonder if that belief was just another form of the common assumption that the productive “adult” part of our lives is the part that really matters. The middle part, when people are at the peak of their powers. When they are inventing and building things and managing households and businesses and nations. The part when these people are running, and “saving,” the world. This is the part of people’s lives that is reported in the news and written about in history books. The important part of human life.

But, being in that part of life, while spending most of my time caring for people who are not in that part of life, I’m beginning to wonder. The assumed “important” part of life is usually less that half of it. Maybe a third. Is childhood and old age, the majority of our years, just preface and afterword to the “real” story of our lives?

Is that what God had in mind, in creating human life like it is? From what I’ve seen, God doesn’t have the highest view of people “at the peak of their powers.”

I’m going to let this nag at me some more...