Life to the full

Dylan Moran once jokingly said that you should be as alive as you can until you're totally dead, a sentiment that I agree with, and one that was poignantly apparent yesterday. I went to see someone I've known all my life (who will remain anonymous) who has just been diagnosed as having dementia; two weeks ago he was almost fine, last week he didn't remember who he was. Yesterday he seemed better, meaning that he could mostly keep a reasonable conversation, but he still wasn't great - he couldn't find his way across the hall to go to the toilet. However, he was enjoying humour that he wouldn't have found amusing before. What does that have to do with living life? He's virtually bedridden, can't remember how to comb his hair or shave his moustache and yet he is still trying to make a go for what ever he can. When you compare that with other people younger, fitter, smarter, more ambitious and healthier than him (read here us), he blows us out of the water with zest for life despite not being able to live nearly as much as we can and having a definite limit on his mental capacity.

This is not me proposing hedonism as a great way to go, this is me saying that we should enjoy life. When you look around at us today, we have everything we want right at our fingertips and this is the problem. All we seem to want is what we can get easily. To have to try to get anything is anathema to our societal stance. It inhibits our enjoyment. We have to be reminded that working for something increases our appreciation of it. All we want to do is, in the words of Voddie Baucham, get what we can, can what we get and sit on the can. No, what I want to put forward is what John Piper calls Christian Hedonism, the view that says that we should enjoy what God has given to us because 'he is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him'.

How's that for train of thought. But I'm not done. I want to also mention someone else I know (who will also remain anonymous) who has been virtually reduced to a anxious wreck from his job. He, despite being 30 years younger has had almost the polar opposite response. He has withdrawn and is depressed about almost everything. Now, I do know that anxiety and depression almost always go together, but when you compare the two responses, I'd much rather take the first response.