A LIFE FULL OF TOMORROWS

I guess I miss the days of attempting to gather our five sons and our little daughter on Monday evenings for Family Night. (I made an error or slip when I was typing that last sentence and typed Family Fights) I think the pain of undisciplined chaotic hours is fading, because I am now beginning to recall some special evenings when everyone was involved and it felt like the purpose of Family Home Evening was realized if only for a few fleeting moments.

I remember one of those Monday Family Home Evenings which turned out semi positive. (This was before we instituted volleyball as our regular Family Night and attempted to have our spiritual lesson on Sunday evenings, when all members of the family seemed to be a bit calmer.)

The lesson for that ‘better’ Family Home Evening instructed us to make a search of our private mounds of treasure and select that ‘one’ item which if we were called upon to evacuate our home and city, we would not be willing to leave behind. The lesson presenter was told to remain seated during the search and after each family member had shown their article and given a reason for selecting it, the family was supposed to ask where the presenter’s item was. Then, the presenter was to respond, “You are all here, my family is the one thing I would never wish to leave behind.”

This Family Home Evening lesson probably fits into the many cliché formats which have an extra amount of emotional appeal, because they are based on Finality Themes. For years speakers at BYU forums have been asked to give a ‘Last Lecture’, which was intended to stimulate all who were listening into making a dramatic change of direction in their lives. We have all been asked to think about what we would tell our parents if we knew it was the last time we would see them. All of us have probably been asked to contemplate what we would do if we knew we only had a short time to live.

Some years ago I was paying a consolation visit to a friend of mine who had recently lost his brother. Little did I know that I would leave that short visit with a very interesting twist on finality themes. Just a few months earlier his brother had been told that his illness was not one of those ‘take a pill’ things, but he was embarking on a short journey to terminality. My friend summarized the last few months of his brother and his brother’s family with the following thoughts. “There were no dramatic changes of direction needed.” “Their proper course was already a well-established pattern.” “The family was at peace because peace was the norm for the family.” “Love abounded during those months because the family relationships had always been founded on love.” “This final journey was a shared familial experience because all previous experiences had been done with oneness.”

Since that day, when I received far more consolation from my friend than I was able to give, I have remembered this, along with other experiences on that marvelous list, when the skin on the back of my upper arms prickled and the lower lids of my eyes were unable to retain the tears which welled while the Spirit was felt.

Subsequent pondering on this experience with principle has brought me to the belief that the secret to gaining a life filled with purposefulness may not come from living each day as if it were to be our last, but because we weigh each action as if we had a millennial life ahead. Living each moment as if the way I now react will have everlasting consequences for multitudes of tomorrows.

I believe it is possible that weighing decisions on eternal scales might help us become more genuine in our relationships and more sincere in our actions. We might find ourselves developing patterns of constancy of goodness. We might find the directions of our steps more consistently straight. We might find that our tomorrows seem directed to a higher level of trust and security. Not only will we be more constant in seeing the good in others, but I believe likewise, we will begin to have a greater degree of self-love with an appreciation of what we are becoming.

I pause to think about how much more speedy my progress would have been if there hadn’t been so many moments of retracing, retrieving, repenting and regretting. I can’t help but think that ‘futuring’ my thoughts, words and deeds would have saved decades of accumulated detours.

The longer I live the more I desire an epitaph which reads something like “he lived a long, peaceful good life full of love and joy” rather than, “that fellow really came through at the end.” Scrooge is to be respected for his last minute character correction, but lost forever are the decades of sweetness ‘which might have been’. Gone are the years of loving having been cankered by bitterness. Never to be retrieved are the moments of loving tenderness which dissolved in the darkness of fear and pride.

We should all hope we can be more constant in remembering that today will never be the last day of anyone’s life but will always be the first day of the rest of our eternal lives.

It might be well if a part of those prayers we send heavenward might be for help in living today in such a way that we will begin or continue a constancy of a pattern of life that will forever lead to an increase of joy and fulfillment for us and all those we encounter.