I picked up a movie

I picked up a movie from the video store the other day and the receipt read “Please return by November 3, 2005.” Seeing November written there, and realizing it was only a few days, I took notice for the first time about how long we have been here.  We left in July, and now it’s the last weekend in October.  We are one fourth of the way through, and it feels like we just started.

In addition to that I have a birthday coming up and I will be twenty five.  If I live to be 100, then I am one quarter of the way through this life.  However, the feelings of anxiousness about getting, and seeing, and doing that I have about this year in Japan are much different than the feelings of anxiousness I have about death.  The anxiousness associated with this trip is very tangible.  There is a beginning and an end that I can see on a calendar, I can count the days,  I can plan a budget, I can prepare for everything I will need to do when I get back. I know how much time I have, and I can pace myself.

I have no such luxuries with this earth life.  I know it will end someday, probably many many years from now, but there is no way to tell when or how I will end this journey.  And now, being as young as I am it is difficult to feel any sort of anxiousness about life.  It’s as if I have a project due in Heaven, the biggest project of my life.  I have all the instructions, all the help I need, and I am supposed to be anxiously engaged in the work, but with no ‘due date,’  it’s difficult to be conscious of the ticking clock.   Perhaps the answer is to assume the project is due today, and live so that I am prepared to turn the project in when the teacher calls and says its due.