On Being Different

New Years becomes both an occasion to revisit our mortality and also a time when we hope we can experience renewal. Follow any media outlet and you can see this pattern repeated in the run-up to the big event. We are reminded of those we lost in the previous 12 months and what our wishes are for the next year. For many of us there is a familiar frustration with how many goals were left unfinished.For those of us wishing we had more time to complete our resolutions, consider what it must have been like for those two or three centuries ago, when the average lifespan was roughly half what it is now. Put another way, they had roughly half the amount of time we do to make a difference in their world.They weren’t all that dissimilar from us. They had families, responsibilities, jobs, communities that required their participation. But for a lot of that time they were sick – healthcare wouldn’t come for centuries. Furthermore they were happy if half of their children lived to adulthood. Poverty was a regular way of life, as were things like slavery or pestilence. For women – well, we know about that. Ruling political parties or kings were more autocratic than anything, insensitive to the plight of average citizens.What they did have that we lack was a sense of urgency. This partly came from the fewer years they had on earth and the ever-present reality of death, but also an inherent desire to do something more with life than they were presently experiencing.What this really meant was that most of those who made significant contributions to their world did so when they were relatively young. Mozart died at 35, while Schubert departed earlier, at 31.  Robbie Burns passed on at 37. Blaise Pascal made it to 39. This list could go on and on because people back then were lucky to make it into their late-40s or early-50s.Not having the blessing of years as most of us have today, they made their contributions while they could, often suffering sickness and privation in the process. But they showed up with their talents and commitments, and because they did, they mattered. Furthermore, they appear to have had a stronger sense of community because their collective life was always being threatened by loss. British writer John Donne captured it poignantly when, after the loss of his daughter Lucy, he penned: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”Statistics say that most of us will live into our seventies or eighties. Aware of that reality, we tend to abandon that sense of urgency that would normally propel us to action – in believing we have many years yet, we postpone many of our New Year’s resolutions. To be sure, great discoveries will unfold in medicine, science and business, because most are paid to make such breakthroughs. But for average citizens there is no such incentive. Instead it falls to our resolve to make our world a better place with little reward. I believe each us of houses that desire, but what we lack is the sense of immediacy or urgency to do it now because there is always the belief we’ll yet have time.Sometimes part of the reason we don’t get around to fulfilling our resolutions is not because we are too busy or because they are so difficult, but because our timeline for accomplishing them goes on for some time yet. For many of us, that outlook eventually drains us, over time, of the will to make our difference while we can.It always troubles us to learn that there are consequences to our inactions. Even if we do have time yet, those we vow to help might not. Those lost in poverty, the sick, the planet, the world’s underprivileged – all these live in the “now” and their pressures are immediate. Our delay in action can prolong their misery.This New Year I’ve asked God to make me a more noble person – not through the grace of years lived but of moments seized for the betterment of others. As Norman Cousins put it, “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” Let’s not permit that sense of urgency for the sake of others to be lost in the hubbub of our daily lives. With the privilege of living longer than our ancestors comes the opportunity to better our neighbourhoods, communities, our country, our world. The best resolution we could act upon, however, would be to make ourselves better by making the lives of others better.Tonight we make our resolutions. In doing so, let’s remember Harold Kushner’s observation: “I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear … that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.” Let’s never this happen to us. We matter to our world and our individuality can have its effects. Let’s stick out as citizens dedicated to their task, foregoing conformity and embracing the privileges of assisting others in the years that remain.