I remember the first time I saw a magic show. I was about eight years old.
The guy made handkerchiefs disappear, coins come out of people's ears, and made a woman disappear right before our eyes. He was actually pretty good. I marveled at his magic powers and wondered how he did it.
Then I learned about sleight of hand.
Sleight of hand works by directing your attention one place while the trick happens at another. We instinctively follow the magician's eyes and hand gestures while the other hand subtly works the "magic."
I realized that what I perceived to be real was based on not having all the information. I was led astray by only noticing half of what was going on. But the fact that I didn't notice the other half didn't mean the other half didn't exist.
I began to wonder if there were other things that I was being "shown" in life that caused me to think a certain way. I wondered if culture was throwing me a "sleight of hand" that made me believe something while not noticing something else. Then something happened that would change the way I view everything.
My ten-day-old son died.
Like everyone else, I grew up around clocks. Clocks measure time, with hands going around endlessly in circular motion. A clock gives the impression that time goes on infinitely.
Contrast that to an hourglass. Instead of going around and around for what seems to be an eternity, an hourglass shows you that time is limited. You can watch the level of sand decrease and decrease and finally run out.
I believe that humanity's biggest illusion is that we will have time forever. That's why we prefer clocks to hourglasses. No one wants to be reminded that his or her time is slipping away, that we won't have an infinite amount of time here, that we are all in the process of dying. We have plastic surgery to rid ourselves of the reminders of aging. We have hair plugs put in to make us look young. We are shocked and cry "unfair!" when someone younger than 90 dies, as if that person had been robbed of their right to a long life full of years.
When my son died, I realized that the hourglass was a much better indicator of time than a clock was. God didn't rob my son of anything. His young life was not cut short, nor was God being unfair to him. I realized that I had been a victim of a cultural sleight of hand. This culture had taught me that everyone has time, time, time. Everyone lives a long life. There is always tomorrow.
The fact that my son died at ten days is not nearly as shocking as the fact that I have lived 38 years.
People, we are not guaranteed tomorrow, or even the next hour. Yet we live like it. We fool ourselves into thinking that our life has a clock instead of an hourglass. We refuse to believe that our lives are short and our days are numbered, because that is just very unpleasant to think about. The psalmist asked God to, "Teach us to number our days," (Psalm 90) so that we don't take a single day for granted.
If you started viewing your life through the lens of an hourglass, instead of a clock, I wonder what changes you would make today.
The guy made handkerchiefs disappear, coins come out of people's ears, and made a woman disappear right before our eyes. He was actually pretty good. I marveled at his magic powers and wondered how he did it.
Then I learned about sleight of hand.
Sleight of hand works by directing your attention one place while the trick happens at another. We instinctively follow the magician's eyes and hand gestures while the other hand subtly works the "magic."
I realized that what I perceived to be real was based on not having all the information. I was led astray by only noticing half of what was going on. But the fact that I didn't notice the other half didn't mean the other half didn't exist.
I began to wonder if there were other things that I was being "shown" in life that caused me to think a certain way. I wondered if culture was throwing me a "sleight of hand" that made me believe something while not noticing something else. Then something happened that would change the way I view everything.
My ten-day-old son died.
Like everyone else, I grew up around clocks. Clocks measure time, with hands going around endlessly in circular motion. A clock gives the impression that time goes on infinitely.
Contrast that to an hourglass. Instead of going around and around for what seems to be an eternity, an hourglass shows you that time is limited. You can watch the level of sand decrease and decrease and finally run out.
I believe that humanity's biggest illusion is that we will have time forever. That's why we prefer clocks to hourglasses. No one wants to be reminded that his or her time is slipping away, that we won't have an infinite amount of time here, that we are all in the process of dying. We have plastic surgery to rid ourselves of the reminders of aging. We have hair plugs put in to make us look young. We are shocked and cry "unfair!" when someone younger than 90 dies, as if that person had been robbed of their right to a long life full of years.
When my son died, I realized that the hourglass was a much better indicator of time than a clock was. God didn't rob my son of anything. His young life was not cut short, nor was God being unfair to him. I realized that I had been a victim of a cultural sleight of hand. This culture had taught me that everyone has time, time, time. Everyone lives a long life. There is always tomorrow.
The fact that my son died at ten days is not nearly as shocking as the fact that I have lived 38 years.
People, we are not guaranteed tomorrow, or even the next hour. Yet we live like it. We fool ourselves into thinking that our life has a clock instead of an hourglass. We refuse to believe that our lives are short and our days are numbered, because that is just very unpleasant to think about. The psalmist asked God to, "Teach us to number our days," (Psalm 90) so that we don't take a single day for granted.
If you started viewing your life through the lens of an hourglass, instead of a clock, I wonder what changes you would make today.
Great writing, David. Jacob's life taught me a lot, and this blog is a reminder of that.
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