“Fully Engaged with Life”
My twelve-step sponsor made an intriguing comment a week or so ago. He often does. But this one has gotten stuck in my heart: “Be fully engaged,” he counseled me.
Sounded good, but I didn’t know the origin of the word “engage.” So I did what modern people do when they don’t know something: I googled it! Here is what I found out about the origin of the word.
“en·gage . . .
late Middle English (formerly also as ingage ): from French engager, ultimately from the base of gage1. The word originally meant ‘to pawn or pledge something,’ later ‘pledge oneself (to do something),’ hence ‘enter into a contract’ (mid 16th century), ‘involve oneself in an activity,’ ‘enter into combat’ (mid 17th century), giving rise to the notion ‘involve someone or something else.’
gage1
ɡāj/
archaic
noun
- 1. a valued object deposited as a guarantee of good faith.
verb
- 1. offer (a thing or one’s life) as a guarantee of good faith.”
So, being engaged involves putting yourself or something you value into something. Being engaged means that I am not a bystander (innocent or otherwise) in my life.
I am sitting in a hotel room at Myrtle Beach, watching the waves coming ashore. The sun is up. It is, of course, easy to be engaged at this moment. I am here with my sweetheart, enjoying a few days of vacation. It is wonderful.
Yet, even here, it is easy to disengage. After getting settled into our room last evening, my wife and I went for a walk along the beach. It wasn’t crowded, but there were some folks enjoying the late afternoon. There were kids playing in the sand, and some kids were wading in the shallows. It was wonderful.
But, of course, me being me, I thought of our trips to the beach when our own children were little. And, at that point, it was only a stone’s throw to regret for the dad I was and the dad I was not. The past is sand in the cogs of being fully engaged.
The future can also mess with being fully engaged. I worry. I worry about retirement. Will we have enough to live on, and enough to do some fun things? I worry about health—my wife’s and my own. I worry about how much longer I will be able to teach, to wait tables, to mow the grass. I worry because the strawberries may be ripening (and rotting) while we are at the beach. I worry about the fact that we only have a few days at the beach. I worry about whether the weather will be nice. I worry about . . .
Well, listing these worries is making me more worried (which is one more thing to worry about), so I’ll stop. You get the point.
If the past and the future can interfere with being fully engaged, I now know what full engagement might look like. It means being completely present.
I started this blog post at home, looking out my window on a grey April day. I was looking out the window, watching the maple seeds twirling toward their destiny. I think that I was fully engaged.
I am finishing this post at the beach, with the sun streaming through my window. I think that I am fully engaged.
Thanks, sponsor, for the very needful reminder!
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