Where are you going?

(Post 7 of 8)

There will come a day when you are not the rising star, nor will your opinion be as valued as it is today. There will be a day when you are the 'old guy.' You will be the one with the stories, but you won't be the one with the 'bright future.' You will have spent your bright future. 

There will be a day when you won't be as athletic as you once were. Injuries, age, losses, and failures will catch up, and your capacity will be different, probably lower. There will be a day when you will not be as good-looking or quick-witted, and your jokes will become terribly dated (yes, I still think Wayne's World one-liners are hilarious—that day has arrived for me prematurely).  

The Greeks understood this as the 'Telos'—the end to which something points. How do you see the end playing itself? How does it shape the path you take from here to there? 

Will you be the joyful, older man who delights in the success of those who follow, even when they undo his work? 

Will you allow younger men to pass you by as they stand on your shoulders to achieve things you never could have imagined?  

Or

Will your regrets ferment into shame? 

Will your disappointments become projections and resentments? 

Will you be the angry old man with cable news television running 2-16 hours daily, furious about what "they" did to our nation? Will you grow old needing a "they" to be angry with?  

 Will you see the later years of your life as an opportunity to give or take more? Are you looking to the last years of life so that you can focus on yourself or give more to the world that has given so much to you? Assuming there is no tragic way your life gets cut short, could the days you prepared not to work be the most fruitful of your life?

You get to choose where to spend your time and take all that hard-earned wisdom and use it for the good of others.  

This brings us back to question #5, Who is God? If you are God, you get to choose, but if there is a God and that God is the one that has been revealed through Jesus Christ, it means that every single one of your days has been counted, and it matters. It means, as one writer has said, you are not dead if you are not done. 

 For you, where are you going? Who are you becoming? What will all this amount to in the end?