The Infinite Value of Limited Time

This week, the New York Times posted its last segment of the blog "Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times." As the Times described it, "Happy Days is a discussion about the search for contentment in its many forms — economic, emotional, physical, spiritual — and the stories of those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead."

I have not been a regular reader of "Happy Days" and just happened to stumble upon this entry, in which Clemson University philosophy professor and author Todd May writes about a near-death experience. Its publication during a week in which Americans have been confronted and assaulted with dozens of examples of violent, untimely deaths, lead me to think harder about the gift of life we all are given.

These words particularly struck me:

"And when there is always time for everything, there is no urgency for anything. It may well be that life is not long enough. But it is equally true that a life without limits would lose the beauty of its moments. It would become boring, but more deeply it would become shapeless. Just one damn thing after another.

This is the paradox death imposes upon us: it grants us the possibility of a meaningful life even as it takes it away. It gives us the promise of each moment, even as it threatens to steal that moment, or at least reminds us that some time our moments will be gone. It allows each moment to insist upon itself, because there are only a limited number of them. And none of us knows how many."

The finite nature of life can be paralyzing. People may fear making the wrong choice. Yet that very paralysis is waste; a squandering of the finite number of years, seasons, minutes and moments allotted to each of us.