A Walk to Forget

Not everyone is a writer, but each person on the face of God's green earth deals with stinging criticism now and then. You can choose to wallow in the depths of a nobody-likes-me-everybody-hates-me-I-think-I'll-go-eat-worms stupor. Or you can do what I do.

Take a hike past a cemetery.

Seeing tombstones and graves has a sobering way of making me realize what's important and what's not...like someone else's completely subjective opinion of me. It's a great way to make me forget things that never should have mattered in the first place.

I think it's interesting that with as much violence and killing that we see on TV, video games and the big screen, that our culture is so far removed from death. Bodies used to be on display in the home, up close and personal, allowing death to whack our priorities into shape. Not anymore. The dead are sanitarily disposed of, or if put on display for a funeral reviewal, all gussied up to eradicate the signs of decomposition. The effectiveness of introspection about our own lives in the presence of the deceased has been lost.

Maybe that's why Americans are so uptight, hmm?

So, if you don't happen to live near a cemetery to clear your mind when you need to, here's a verse to keep handy:

"Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."

James 4:14