How Long Have You Lived?
Mar 08, 2021
While teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Tony Campolo once turned an ordinary lecture into an unforgettable lesson for his students. Dr. Campolo is an interesting character. When I met him many years ago, he said that the reason he does not wear turtle-neck sweaters is that they make him look like roll-on deodorant (he is very bald).
In this lecture, he asked an unsuspecting student sitting in the front row, “Young man, how long have you lived?” The student answered his age. Tony responded, “No, no, no. That’s how long your heart has been pumping blood. That’s not how long you have lived.”
Tony Campolo then told the class about one of the most memorable moments of his life. In 1944, his fourth-grade class took a field trip to the top of the Empire State Building. It was the tallest building in the world at the time. When nine-year-old Tony got off the elevator and stepped onto the observation deck overlooking New York City, time stood still. “In one mystical, magical moment I took in the city,” he said. “If I live a million years, that moment will still be part of my consciousness, because I was fully alive when I lived it.”
Tony turned back to the student. “Now, let me ask you the question again. How long have you lived?” The student sheepishly said, “When you say it that way, maybe an hour; maybe a minute; maybe two minutes.”
How long have you lived? I mean really lived. It’s easy calculating age. It’s more difficult quantifying life. Why?
Because time is measured in minutes, while life is measured in moments.
Read that line again. Go ahead. I'll wait.
What are those top-of-the-Empire-State-Building moments for you? For most of us, they are too few and far between. When was the last time that time stood still? And if you turned those moments into minutes, how long have you lived?
According to psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, the average person spends 46.9 percent of their time thinking about something other than what they’re doing in the present moment. We’re half-present half the time, which means we’re half-alive. Of course, as a professor at the University of Alaska, I think, "Hmmmm, 78.7 percent of statistics are made up on the spot - including this one." (Yes, I'm being ironic - how could anyone gauge emotional thinking in percentages?)
The only way to be fully alive is to be fully present, and the only way to be fully present is to be where you are when you are there. For far too many of us, life feels like the meaningless passage of time between far too few meaningful moments. And even when they do come along, we take selfies instead of being fully present. We miss the moment because we’re living in the wrong time zone.
We’re so fixated on the past and so anxious about the future that we miss the present. Then we wonder where life went.
The future is right here, right now—the eternal now. Heaven is invading earth. Eternity is invading time. Most people falsely assume that eternity starts at some point in the far-off future, and they live accordingly. Eternity is counterclockwise. Eternity is invading time every second of every minute of every hour of every day!
“Every now is an eternity,” said Frank Laubach, “if it is full of God.”
Want to see it for yourself?
Here is the only verse in all of Holy Writ where Jesus describes Eternal Life.
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3, NIV)
Having a relationship with the Living God through Jesus Christ as the only way, truth, and LIFE is when your life will have true meaning. (John 14:6)
A little faith looks forward to heaven after earth.
Real faith brings heaven to earth right now!
Eternal life is your present reality that continues through the door called death!
Begin living NOW in every moment. You'll be glad you did 500 years from now!
Rejoicing, On the Victory Side!
Beau