Lately I’ve been thinking about the books that changed me. There are many. Most forgotten are the thin primers that taught me to read in a cinder block classroom with the students’ art taped to windows looking out on Parsippany, New Jersey. With these are the works of math and science that gave me many of the facts still filling my head. And there were others that changed the way I lived my life. Here’s one that didn’t.
The passage below is from Our Town by Thornton Wilder. This moment immediately follows a scene where, Emily, recently dead, is allowed to relive a day in her life. She is warned by others in the afterlife not to do this but ignores the advice. She relives in inconsequential day, the morning of her twelfth birthday. Emily discovers, instead of bringing comfort, the reliving day brings the painful knowledge that no one appreciated the blessigns and gifts they had in the moment—seeing her mother young, the love she felt for her family. She leaves this day early and speaks about the experience to the Stage Manager in the play, himself a metaphor for God.
Emily
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?
The Stage Manager
The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.
When I read that passage as a teenager, I wanted to change. I wanted to live life intentionally. I wanted to treat every day as the vanishing magic it was, the lows as well as the highs.
I failed.
It was, I found, impossible. The focus I needed just to keep a roof over my head, maintain friendships, and manage a career—all of it—kept me in a state of semi-distraction (or perhaps abstraction), vicariously living through my own experience.
I still love Our Town.
I found the same scene life changing. Although our dogs and cats haven't been exposed to this wonderfully insightful play, they instinctively exist in the moment - never considering the past or future. They joyfully live in the present. I can truly appreciate this perspective since it makes me more aware of the many precious blessings I encounter daily.