Before We Knew it was Precious

There is a particular sadness that comes with getting older. It is not simply that we have fewer years ahead of us. It is that we finally understand the value of some of the years behind us.

Time has a way of moving forward without asking our permission. It carries us along while we are busy living ... raising children, working, making plans, worrying about money, rushing to the next appointment, the next season, the next thing that needs to be done. We imagine there will always be another summer, another long drive, another afternoon with someone we love.

And then, one day, we realize there isn't.

We look back and see the old roads differently. If I could walk one of those roads again, I wouldn't hurry. I would stop for the horses beside the fence. I would look across the open country and let my eyes linger on the hills and the sky. I would notice the way the light fell across the road. I would breathe in the ordinary air of an ordinary day and understand that there was nothing ordinary about it at all. I would stay a little longer. Listen a little closer. Laugh without wondering what came next. And I would pay more attention to the people walking beside me.

Because perhaps this is one of the hardest lessons of growing older: we are living inside the moments we will someday wish we could have back.

At the time, we don't know it. We don't know that the noisy kitchen filled with family will someday feel like a sacred place. We don't know that the familiar voice on the telephone will one day be the voice we would give anything to hear again. We don't know that the children we are hurrying to get dressed, fed and out the door are already moving toward lives that will take them farther away.

We think the moment is simply a moment. We don't yet know it is becoming a memory.

And perhaps that is why looking back can hurt so much. Not because our lives were necessarily unhappy, but because they were full of beautiful things we did not yet know how to see.

Still, I don't think the answer is to live our remaining years regretting the years we hurried through. That would be another way of hurrying. We cannot go back and walk the old road again. We cannot stop time from carrying away the people, places and seasons that made us who we are. But we can become different travellers now.

We can slow down. We can look. We can notice. We can call someone simply because we thought of them. We can sit a little longer at the table. We can watch the sunset instead of photographing it. We can ask an older person to tell us the story we've heard a dozen times before. We can let a beautiful afternoon be enough without needing it to accomplish anything.

Perhaps age gives us this gift, even as it takes so much away: the ability to recognize the preciousness of ordinary life while we are still living it.

The road ahead may not be as long as the road behind us. But perhaps it can be walked more slowly. There are still horses beside the road. There is still open country.

There are still people beside us who will not always be there. And there are still little things waiting to be noticed.

So today, perhaps we don't need to fix everything. Some days life is simply hard. Some days the weight of what has been lost is very real. But if we must carry the past, let us carry its beauty too. And if we are given another ordinary day, let us not be too quick to pass through it. We may be living in a moment today that someday we will wish, more than anything, we could walk through once again.