The Ticking Clock

In a recent moment of reflection, I discovered this window into my thoughts from a while back. It has not much but everything to do with genealogy…

By the time you reach 50, you will have lived long enough to amass an incredibly vast collection of moments. 26,297,438.3 million of them to be exact. It is no wonder then that, over time, the memories associated with those moments fade. They have to. Otherwise, you would spend your days remembering rather than doing.

Beyond half a century, what you get to keep is a Cliff Notes version of your life. It is an edited constellation of only the most profoundly memorable moments; the ones that changed your life, changed the way you think, changed the way you see the world, changed the person you think you are and/or transformed the person you once hoped to be.

When I was born in 1951, America was on an economic roll. Americans were riding a wave of social mobility propelled by the prosperous aftermath of a harrowing world war. Nazi Germany had been vanquished. Harry Truman was the president of the United States. Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason were stars on the recently universalized medium of communication: Television. “The pill” was invented. Russia sent the first satellite into space. Alan Freed coined the term “rock and roll,” while Chuck Berry extolled “Johnny B. Goode.”

In my little corner of the world, life was underscored by the birthright of being born into the tenth percentile of the American population that was not white. Everyone I knew existed in a parallel universe where everything was influenced by race. I grew up in a segregated community known as the “black belt.” The educational standard was “separate but certainly not equal.” Black workers were the “last hired and first fired.” In 1955, a boy named Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi for purportedly whistling at a white woman. That same year, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. It was not until 1964, when I was 13, that black people gained the benefit of the Civil Rights Act. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act became law. In 2008, a black man became the President of the United States.

There are many experiences within this tableau that could have been THE moment for me.

When I was 15, I gave up my virginity. Surmising that sex was a vastly overrated experience, I vowed nonetheless to keep on trying. When I was 16, I graduated from high school, having taken a fast track in order to escape an abusive stepparent. I was allowed to leave home but have still not figured out if what I found in the outside world was better. At 17, I got pregnant. It was a rude moment of awakening that made me realize how ignorant I was; most assuredly about birth control. A few months after my 18th birthday, I painfully endured giving birth to my one and only child. The incredible pain encapsulated several hours of THE moments! But in the singular moment I held him in my arms for the first time, I was kissed with the momentous realization of how wondrous is the creative power of God. I thereafter had a reason to keep on living. By 27, I was a divorced woman with a fatherless child to raise on my own. There were many sobering moments after that as I parented him to adulthood.

To say that I have witnessed profound changes in American society would be an understatement. However, in the big perspective of things, these defining moments for society were all pretty mundane experiences, undoubtedly shared by many, if not most, people. None of these events or experiences can accurately be defined as THE moment. Not for me. To choose one out of a collection of so many would diminish the importance of all.

Rather, I have come to believe that I experience what amounts to an “aha moment” each and every day. It hits me at first light each morning when I open my eyes and realize that I am still alive. I am invigorated by the thought of being blessed with another chance to live. My blood bubbles with a desire to make the best of it. And, further, to leave a legacy behind for future generations.

As I gather the courage to rise, I contemplate a three thousand year old swathe of Sanskrit wisdom that admonishes one to think about how “Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

Aha!

The original version of this essay was published in December 2010 in the online Smith Magazine “The Moment” Journal: http://www.smithmag.net/moment/story.php?did=174218