Peeling Your Life’s Onion

I turned 74 this month. Every birthday can be a time of reflection and evaluation—as well as the certain knowledge that there are more years behind me than are those that lie ahead. Two weeks before my birthday I gave the last of my scholarly library to the son of a former student of mine. The son, Tim, is a student at Utrecht University where he is studying biblical and ancient Near Eastern languages, as I did 50+ years ago. I can’t think of a better afterlife for my library. And here’s where the onion peeling comes in.

Our lives are made up of many layers. The longer the life, the larger the onion and the more layers. Giving away my library to a younger individual has removed several large layers of my life and work, and I can’t pretend it didn’t cause mixed emotions. It is so easy to identify oneself with one’s work; and my books were my tools. Yet here I am, still alive and kicking, and still me. Peeling an onion is not like being flayed alive! During this same recent period, my wife and I have been doing some serious clearing out of life’s accumulated stuff: clothes, dishes, extraneous furniture, bookcases (of course!). I have found myself remembering when and where we acquired each piece, so it has been a sort of life review; and that onion keeps getting smaller. And none of this has killed me, which is to say, none of it was essential to my life or to being who I am. However, I know that not everyone experiences things this way.

In my first parish, I noticed a curious and morbid pattern: I was burying a lot of 60-something men who had died of no apparent cause. As I talked with their families and friends I began to discover the underlying cause: they were corporate men. They had devoted their lives to one business or another and had left their wives to deal with “extraneous” things such as home life and children. Their faith was largely superficial and certainly nothing that sustained them spiritually. The other common factor amongst the deceased was that they usually died within about a year of retirement. In sum, the end of working life equalled the end of life itself. They quite simply had nothing to live for. In addition, they had few if any interests outside of work. They didn’t volunteer their time, didn’t play sports, didn’t read or paint, etc. At retirement, their onion was chopped right down the middle and was found to be largely dry.

So dear Reader, how much of your life is actually you and how much is merely your life’s role, stuff and things? How many possessions do we hang onto to prove that we exist or that our lives actually matter? If all of our worldly possessions, degrees, awards, promotions, etc suddenly disappeared, who would you or I be or would we simply disappear as well? It’s the old saw about human beings versus human doings. As for me, I’m finding the process of peeling my life’s onion a fascinating adventure. I am enjoying finding the “core” me that still exists underneath the layers. And no, we can’t take anything with us; and all that we really leave behind is what we gave away of ourselves.