Here’s an excerpt from my new book The Seven Surprises, available now at Amazon.com. Hope you enjoy it – Dave
I first started waking up around the age of 41. I’d just started work at a very great church. I knew it was a great church because the people were sure to tell me that most Sundays. I’d left behind another church that had felt like family. But my new church was attended by millionaires, and I now had a healthy salary increase and a lovely new office. It’s walls were hidden by massive dark-stained bookcases that engulfed my puny little library of books.
I was like a boy trying to wear his father’s suit and size 12 shoes.
After arriving, I was invited to a high-level meeting of ministers from the most successful churches in the nation. As our meetings began, I looked around the room and saw faces that were known and respected nationwide. But as they began to share the cutting edge ideas they had for ministry, I noticed something odd. Nothing they said was new. Nothing was innovative. In fact, most of it was stuff the church I’d left was doing as well.
As I sat at that table having finally “made it to the big time”, I felt the color drain from my face. It was all I could do to keep from mumbling out loud, “Is this all you got? Did I really leave the people I loved and a place where I was valued for this?”
Every once in a while, we wake up. In the middle of our routines and distractions, life offers us the red pill of reality. Though we’re tempted by the comfort of our blue-pilled illusions, we’re startled by the inescapable truth that much of what we value is really just rubbish.
They call those red pills our “epiphanies”, or sometimes “our Aha moments”. That may sound exciting, but some are tough medicine to swallow. They often come during teachable moments when we’re blindsided by hard truths.
Welcome to your “teachable moment”. It’s during those lessons like mine around that table where we realize we’ve been wasting a lot of time. Precious time, because time is the one thing you can never earn back. And with some lessons, you’re lucky if you graduate with all your teeth intact.
When we’re twenty, we’re certain we know exactly what we want and how to get it. My young adult son and I have conversations where he tells me all his plans in elaborate detail. I bite my tongue, resisting the urge to point out the holes in his logic. I know from experience he must choose the red pill himself.
It’s dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker. Better just to nudge them away from the edge.
In the great Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, the title character and a young sailor look out onto the city of London. The sailor sees a wonderland full of possibilities. But an embittered Sweeney responds,
“You are young. Life has been kind to you. You will learn.”
And boy, do we learn.
We learn that we not only don’t have all the answers at 20, we don’t even know the biggest questions. That’s not the 20 year-old’s fault, and t’s probably ok they don’t listen to us. Life’s most important epiphanies are better “caught than taught”.
And life, my friend, is an efficient, ruthless teacher. Other teachers only leave red marks on papers. Life leaves scares.
One of our greatest surprises is that many things we fought so hard to escape in our youth – family, home, security – are incredibly valuable. Simultaneously, we find much of what we sacrificed those things for, like success, notoriety, and wealth pay very minimal dividends.
You’re correct to point out these lessons are clichés, but don’t discount them. Things often become clichés because they’re universally true. However, they’re evidently not common knowledge based on how people actually live. Sadly, most people act more like obsessed cats, wasting their lives chasing shiny objects. If you watch the results, you’ll conclude that Satan himself must be operating the laser pointer in that game. While stories of lonely superstars and unsatisfied millionaires are worn-out tropes, people persist in chasing these same mirages believing they’ll be the exception to the rule.
Another great musical, The Fantasticks, tells the fable of a boy who leaves home and his childhood love for the allure of the world. But the narrator El Gallo warns the boy things are not exactly as they seem:
“There’s a song he must sing; It’s a well-known song.
But the tune is bitter and it doesn’t take long to learn!
(The boy sings: “I can learn”)
That pretty little world that beams so bright.
That pretty little world that seems delightful can burn!”
Nevertheless, the boy insists on chasing his fancies. And like an even older parable of yet another prodigal, he returns home beaten and bloodied and longing for the warm embrace of his true love.
Sound familiar? That’s because we’ve all chased dumb dreams. We’ve all wandered way too far into the desert before noticing the oasis is a mirage. No, it’s not just you. It’s every one of us. So don’t beat yourself up.
Join the club. But don’t get too comfortable there.
I believe someone is also conspiring to point us in the right direction. Like the Easter eggs hidden in the yard for your kids, God hides the secrets in plain site for us to find. He’s made them all pretty obvious, but some of them are so counterintuitive we walk right past them…
To find life, give up your own.
Love your enemies.
Prioritize family and friends.
Avoid safety and take risks.
True strength is kindness.
So when you see them, when everyday epiphanies reveal the hidden secrets of life, you must stash them in your basket quickly before they’re snatched away. Because time will do that – it’ll snatch them from right under your eyes. It will distract you with other shinier things that don’t matter, while the real treasure lays visible for anyone with the good sense to grab it.
“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?” – Micah 6:8
So God has hidden the eggs in obvious places, and points us in their direction every day. The path is clear. With each year that passes, the fog of youth is harder to maintain.
The only question left unanswered now is, “Will you grab the lesson with both hands and put it in your basket?”
Hurry, while there’s still time…before the red pill wears off and the epiphany has passed.
