Project Switchfoot: This Is Your Life

My ongoing (and doomed to failure) attempt to give my take on all of Switchfoot's songs.

This Is Your Life:

Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
Yesterday is a promise that you’ve broken
Don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes
This is your life and today is all you’ve got now
Yeah, and today is all you’ll ever have
Don’t close your eyes
Don’t close your eyes

This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, are you who you want to be
This is your life, is it everything that you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Yesterday is a kid in the corner
Yesterday is dead and over
Don’t close your eyes

This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, are you who you want to be?

I think it's easy for us to live in the past or live in the future. I know it is for me. The reason for that, in my opinion, is because we can make it what we want. Certainly when we envision our futures, we can imagine whatever we want. We can picture our future going perfectly and how great it will be. We'll get the girl, we'll get the job, we'll be the star. When we dream about the future, it's almost always a view of everything going right (or if we're feeling particularly depressed at the time, everything going wrong). The point is, we can make it whatever we want, it's fantasy. It's just the same with dwelling in the past too. When we live in the past and reminisce or wonder "what if?", then we can filter it through whatever lens we want. We can make up how things might have gone if we'd done something different. We emphasize different aspects of our memories depending on what we want those memories to be. It's why when we tell stories about people who annoy us, or things that we enjoyed, they become "the worst" or "the best". We see what we want to see in our memory and it becomes just as much fantasy as dreaming about the future is. We like to dwell on the past or the future because it's easy, it's all in our head, so we control it.

The irony of this, of course, is that we actually have no control over the past or the future. You can't change the past, no matter how much you play the "what if?" game. I used to do that all the time when I was younger. I would keep going back to times when I had screwed up and picturing doing it all differently, not saying that stupid thing or not being so nervous or not missing those free throws or whatever. Did it ever help me? Not a bit. This wasn't learning from an experience and moving on, it was continually building a fantasy based on what might have been. Until they invent a time machine, this kind of thinking doesn't help anyone. You can't change the past. "Yesterday is dead and over." Similarly, dreaming about the future really isn't a productive use of your time. You can dream and you can set your best plans to meet those dreams, but you have no real control over the future. No one ever ends up where they expect to be, much less where they dream they will be. As Switchfoot sings "This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be?" You might carefully plan your 10 step process and follow it to success, or you might get hit by a car tomorrow and become a cripple. You can't control the future, no matter how hard you try.

So now, after having rambled on for a bit, I'll return to the song. It's not a song whose meaning is hard to find ("then why did you just ramble on for 2 paragraphs?" You might ask. Well, because otherwise how am I going to look smart and intellectual?). It is repeated over and over again in both the verses and the chorus, "This is your life, are you who you want to be?" The song begs for its hearers to think about where they are right now. Don't think about the past, it's done, it's over with. Don't think about the future and what you might do or what you want to do. Think about the present, the now. Right now, at this moment, are you who you want to be? This is all you can control. You can't change the past. You can't predict the future. What you can control is who you are right now. It's a simple message, and yet when you think of the implications, it's an indictment against all of the time-wasting and apathy we find ourselves mired in. This is your life! You're not promised anything past this. "Today is all you've got now." There is an immediacy to life that we'd just rather ignore. Once the day is gone, it's gone, it's a "wrinkle on your forehead."

I'm going to try not to quote C.S. Lewis in every one of these write-ups, but there's a portion of Lewis's Screwtape Letters which I thing fits perfectly with this song.

"The humans live in time but [God] destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present — either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure."

You're not going to develop a relationship with God by saying "God, I'm going to follow you in the future," you do it by continually saying "God, I'm going to follow you now, in this moment." You can't make resolutions or promise yourself you're going to do better, because we don't have the strength to follow through on it anyway. The only way to find true joy in this life, the only way to be able to say yes to the question "are you who you want to be?" is by living in the shadow of the cross, clinging to the promises of Christ.