Just Life
I always get a little nervous publically citing something from a movie. Inevitably, someone gets offended about the rest of the content in the movie and lets me hear about it. With that said, however, I thought I’d borrow a line from the Touchstone Pictures presentation Tombstone. In it, Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp is having a conversation with Val Kilmer’s Doc Holiday. Earp says he “just wants a normal life.” Doc replies, “There is no normal life. There’s just life.”
Many of us aspire to have some other kind of “life.” We look around at everyone else and think they have it better. Television presents us idyllic examples of the way “things ought to be.” It doesn’t take too long before we begin to think that’s the norm. We want that life, not the mundane, out-of-the-norm life we have. While goals and aspirations are great, and we always want to strive to better ourselves, we need to remember this one thing. There’s just life. Make the most of the life you have now. It’s the only one you have this side of eternity.
“Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11-13, ESV, emphasis added).
