THE FULL DAY-BY-DAY LIFE, considered and reflected upon, is a complete experience. The whole journey is punctuated—on its overall balance—seemingly with every emotion available to humanity.
Each period of life is a station—if we could view life that way—a temporary place of situational schema, uniquely contextualised, painted to the person. On this whistlestop tour we visit each station but do not stay.
Arbitrarily we travel almost without direction as the motives of time outsmart us—they will always have their advantage over us—taking us on a winding, dipping and ascending rollercoaster ride through the entirety of human experience. At times we ask quite desperately, ‘Why this station... why now... why me?’ Perplexed, we can’t grasp why.
And it needs to be recognised...
These stations, like all stations, never come against us derisively or spitefully. They don’t have intentions, they just “are.” And they leave as quickly as they come, though at times they stay with us for unwelcomely long periods of time.
Other stations are far more welcome. But these can’t take a trick, for they never stay long enough for our liking. We usually want to cling to these stations and they simply can’t be clung to. Our times shift—the motives of time beyond us. Time is dynamic.
Stations refuse to be held. We’re up for the full tour: good, bad, indifferent, cold, hot, busy, bored, calm, chaotic, living, dying, in pain, in pleasure; feeling ecstasy, sorrow, bitterness, better-ness; knowing triumph and tragedy—and all between.
This station-stop tour confounds our wills. Frustration is senseless and futile. It kicks against something that merely forces self-harm back on us. Any number of societal ills are attributed the anti-coping measures of people who refuse to endure badly “apportioned” stations; they blame something that simply can’t be blamed.
For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer... in sickness and in health... we must truly accept each and every station as coming inevitably, without bias and certainly on its own merits.
Appreciate that our all-stops tour is saving nothing of what we fully paid for—the investment of air in the lungs, oxygen to the brain, blood to the heart—the living, intelligent organism; the Mastermind behind it all would save us none of the fullest experience, such is his love.
As the seasons endure, combining a punched ticket-book of station visits, we can reflect over our experience one by one and know, God has been, and is, faithful.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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