Pondering Life’s Reversals

The sec­ond half of life is when you watch things turn upside down. It is also like look­ing at the props behind the stage set, while the play is in act three. Simul­ta­ne­ously, it is the time when you start pay­ing closer atten­tion to the minor char­ac­ters. One thing for sure: this is the time when you get more out of the play.
One of those rever­sals is when you begin to feel sorry for peo­ple you used to envy. There is noth­ing sad­der than an aging rock star or for­mer beauty queen that is now more like Humpty Dumpty. The pieces just do not go together any­more. The same can be said for Olympic cham­pi­ons in the clos­ing years of their lives, as they stare at their rust­ing medals encased in yel­low­ing frames.
The life of the com­mon per­son makes more sense as life unfolds. We have no “glory days” that cast ever-darkening shad­ows over our final decades. Pity the poor Pres­i­dents of our coun­try, as they sit on the side­lines — for­ever ignored after hav­ing been so much the cen­ter of atten­tion. The youth cul­ture changes faces by ever shorter sea­sons now. The pity cycle sets in more quickly too. Power dimin­ishes in all but one form — spirit. That is the secret dis­cov­ered by the world’s most ignored.
Jesus was known for point­ing out life’s rever­sals. He was onto them early in life. He was also ridiculed for doing it. His famous say­ing that, “the first will be last and the last will be first” makes more sense the longer you pon­der it. It is even more appar­ent in the East, where peo­ple are revered for sim­ply being older. Not all coun­tries are cursed with the shal­low­ness of a media-driven celebrity cult.
As the smoke of another elec­tion cycle clears, I have come to pity the win­ners more than the losers. The losers can go home. The win­ners go to new offices, where they will be scru­ti­nized, ridiculed, lied about, scape­goated, and even­tu­ally bal­ly­hooed out of the office they fought so hard to acquire. Their names will no longer be their prop­erty. They have no con­trol over his­to­ri­ans’ pens. They may have even traded the world for their soul — a really bad deal, accord­ing to the Lord.
So, here I am in a small town, enjoy­ing all that life has to offer. I do not have to be on polit­i­cal stage, and I have no oblig­a­tions to “fans” that will inevitably find some other star. I have been spared the pains of the rise and fall. Thank God!
Ah, the glory of the ordinary!