life is . . .

what you're doing right now.

This was my epiphany a couple of weeks ago, as I weighed future options and thought about this feeling I have of sort of wasting time while I go to school and manage my part-time jobs.

But as I looked around I saw that all that anybody really had was Right Now, and that what we "do" with our lives is just a succession of decisions made in the Right Now. We're all just doing the next thing.

I read Christian biographies and have dreams of doing great things for Christ. But there is no moment of "NOW I am doing the great thing." Not even in martyrdom. It is all a succession of minute decisions, choices made in the Right Nows of life.

What doesn't come out in the big picture of a biography is most of the uncertainty, the weighing of A versus B (when either seems equally viable), the feeling of acting out an unfinished story. The biography, when written, by nature is finished. Life -- as long as you're living -- isn't.