This Saturday I went to the Hakuna concert in Madrid. Truth is, I didn’t really feel like it. I had hundreds of excuses not to go, but in the end that thing the Gospel talks about happened: sometimes we’re saved by our friends. And mine decided that Saturday was concert day.
It was a beautiful night, fun, one of those you enjoy without too many explanations. We sang, we laughed, we jumped… But curiously, what’s been going through my head the most since then happened before the first song even started.
It all began with a countdown. Like at so many concerts: ten, nine, eight, seven…
Until a dinosaur appeared. Yes, a dinosaur. Well, a dinosaur costume that started accompanying the countdown. The problem is that, before reaching five, it decided to stop counting correctly. It started shouting random numbers until, suddenly, it blurted out:
“Bingo!”
And the countdown broke. Then a reflection began that I’ve been mulling over since Saturday: maybe we spend too much of our lives doing exactly that, living in a countdown.
Always waiting for life to begin
We wait to finish our studies to start living. We wait to finish exams to be free. We wait to find work, have money, become independent, fall in love, get married, have children, or for the children to grow up.
We wait for Friday to enjoy ourselves. For vacation to rest. For summer when it’s cold and for winter when we’re roasting from the heat. And it happens with God too.
We wait to have everything clear before giving ourselves over. We wait for a definitive sign. An undeniable certainty. An apparition, almost. Something that assures us it’s worth taking the plunge.
We wait for “that thing” to arrive that, we assume, will make our life truly begin. And while we wait, life is happening.
Maybe that’s why I liked one of the ideas from that reflection so much: what if we stop waiting for that thing to arrive and learn to enjoy everything leading up to it too?
The beer with friends before the concert. The nerves before a trip. Preparing a wedding. Training for months for a race. An unexpected conversation. Singing terribly in the car on the way to the beach. A meal that stretches on. A sunset that doesn’t fix any of your problems, but manages to make everything seem in its place for five minutes.
How many things do we treat as mere formalities when, in reality, they’re privileges?
The big warm-up
Since Saturday I’ve been thinking that maybe all of life is one big warm-up.
And for a Christian this makes even more sense. We believe we’re walking toward something. That our story doesn’t end here. That we’re made for Life with a capital L, for eternal life, for that definitive encounter with God in which there will be no more goodbyes or countdowns.
We’re living the warm-up to life without sunset. But here’s the paradox: knowing that the best is yet to come shouldn’t lead us to despise what’s already happening. Quite the opposite.
If this life is the warm-up to eternity, we’d better live a good warm-up.
We’d better love a lot. Laugh a lot. Forgive a lot. Embrace. Take risks. Make mistakes and try again. Sit at the table. Waste time with those we love. Let God surprise us in the everyday. Dance when it’s time to dance and cry when it’s time to cry.
Because Christian hope doesn’t consist of enduring this life waiting for the next one to arrive. It consists of discovering that eternity has already begun to slip into this life.
Every time we truly love, every time someone saves us from being locked inside ourselves, every time we share life, every time we make room for God, something of what we’re waiting for is already happening.
Maybe the problem is that we live counting: ten, nine, eight, seven… waiting for the big moment to arrive.
Waiting for the song to start. And it turns out it’s already playing.
So maybe we need an absurd dinosaur to appear every now and then, break our countdown, and shout “Bingo!” to remind us of something quite serious: Life doesn’t start later. Life is happening now.
And yes, we’re waiting for Eternal Life. We’re waiting for the definitive encounter. We’re waiting for life without sunset.
But while it arrives, let’s enjoy the warm-up.
Let’s dance. Let’s sing. Let’s love. Let’s pray. Let’s laugh. Let’s let our friends save us. Let’s let God find us. And let’s stop making excuses.
Because we only have two options: wait to die or enjoy living.
