Saturday, August 18, 2007

Sitting in my room in Edmonton, waiting for my friend James to come pick me up and drive me to the Greyhound station.
Soon I'll be sitting on the bus, watching the Alberta landscape whirr by as I travel back to Calgary.
Sometimes it seems that that's what life does. You sit and watch and it just whirrs by as you press your nose against the glass and leave patches of cloudy vapour. Soon the greens and yellows and oranges and blues kind of blur together until nothing is really distinguishable. It seems like the past six weeks went by in a blur. Six weeks of long bus rides and cups of coffee and long rounds and wound evaluations and cognitive assessments and wheelchair adjustments, of walking down Whyte Ave. and shopping at West Edmonton Mall and hanging out with friends and eating out and playing volleyball...
After working in hospitals where death is not uncommon and having two of my childhood friends pass away over the past year the question always comes up of whether we're just living and living and living until we die. Do we just see just see life whirr by through a window? What does it mean to "live a full life"? That's always the phrase that's tossed around, isn't it? If C.S. Lewis is right, and all men are immortal, then there must be more to it than just living. If we believe there is an eternity, we must act accordingly.