“In real life…”
We throw this phrase around a lot on our squad. You probably say it a lot too.(Ironically, without thinking, I first typed “You probably say that in real life.”
When I worked at my summer camp, me and my friends would refer to what we’re like “in real life,” meaning when we weren’t at camp.
College kids refer to post-graduation and full-time jobs and marriage as “real life.”
When I’m at home I say it for any place outside my house.(like when it’s 2pm and I’m still in my pajamas with no makeup, and I promise my mom I’ll make myself much more presentable for real life)
But the way we talk about it on the World Race has especially made me realize that most people use the term “real life” to describe any place or time that they aren’t currently in.
“I could never eat like this in real life.”
“My friends in real life don’t love me the way my teammates do.”
“It’s so much harder to stay close to God in real life.”
“We have to go back to real life in five months!!”
But what if we thought of real life as wherever we are?
What if we were just as excited about the day we have as we are about the tomorrow we might get?
What if the people in front of us were just as important as the people we might be with later?
God gives us today and tells us to make something with it. Then he gives us another today. That’s how it works.
If you only ever think of real life as the next step ahead of you, you never get to live in real life.
That makes me really sad.
And seriously, I’d like to think that the World Race is as real as life gets.
If going to Chinese weddings and eating noodles every day and making friends with strangers and hugging small children who don’t speak a word of English and living in the same kind of community that the disciples did, isn’t real life, I don’t know what is.
But the Race won’t last forever, and I don’t want to go home and start treating that life as if it’s less meaningful than the one I just spent eleven months living.
I want to live where I am, with who I’m with. No matter where or who that is.
I hope you do too.
In the new year, but especially this next month(because January is the only thing standing between me and Cambodia and I can totally see myself wanting to hurry through that), I want to live in my todays to the point that I all but forget my tomorrows until they become my todays.
