Milestones

What are the significant events in your life? What milestones do you remember? Some in my life are very important. Graduating. Getting ordained. Getting married. The day we became parents. The year I moved from Canada. I don't think I will ever forget those. Other events seemed very significant at the time, but have become less important over time: learning to drive, getting my first job, moving from primary to high school, etc. At the time they seemed to be very important. But now looking back these secondary events seem to have less and less importance.

Marking events. In one way it is very important. It gives our lives meaning. Without marking the events that we go through what is the point? Getting my first job- a job at a store in a provincial park- seemed very important at the time. I got it on my own. I applied for it, I was interviewed, I was successfully hired, I learned what earning money was all about. I also learned the value of things. I wanted to buy a pair of western boots with the money I earned. I figured that it took me about 30 hours of labour to buy them. For those learning experiences I was very thankful.

The other reality though was that it was not a great job. My boss told me on the first day that he was a very difficult man to work for and he was true to his word. I was only there three months (it was a summer job) and so it was very brief and I did not earn a lot of money. Somedays the job was exceedingly busy and I would come home exhausted. Other days the job was exceedingly slow and I had to seek out things to fill up my time. Some customers were exceedingly rude. And often I had to deal with things like mice, squirrels, and backed up toilets things that were not much fun.  Getting the first job was very important at the time. But now, it is very much less important in the scheme of my life.

As I write this blog today, some children from the child care centre are preparing for a ceremony marking their leaving the centre and going off to Kindergarten next year. For them, it is a very important event. They will have to say good bye to their teachers who have been with them for the past few years. They will be saying goodbye to friends who will be going to different schools. Right now it is a life changing event for them. However in the scheme of things, I am sure that this event will be less significant in their lives. They will have other changes, other awards, other achievements, other passages which will make this event but a footnote in their lives, but today it is very important.

And maybe that is the message for us today. Things will happen in our lives that may seem quite traumatic and life altering. Some no doubt will be- birth of children, death of a spouse, losing a job, etc. Some though will fade away. This should be a good reminder to us. Bad things do happen, but most likely they will fade away in time. We might have already experienced things which we thing are the best ever, but sometimes the best is yet to come. The huge milestones of today are but mere pebbles in the grand scheme of our lives. Blessings