How long have you lived?

(a powerful passage to share below from Tony Campolo's book Carpe Diem) 

"How long have you lived?"

I posed the question to the students on the first day of a special seminar course on existentialism.

No one answered. It may have been that my manner was intimidating. But then again, maybe it was because the question had a certain ambiguity to it.

So I picked out one of the students on the front row of the lecture hall and, riveting my attention on him, I asked the question again, this time with an intensely personal emphasis.

"How long have you lived?" I asked.

My inquiry must have seemed like an attack on him. I could see that he was taken aback. The question seemed to pull him out of a time of private reverie. Instinctively he answered, "Twenty-four years!"

"No! No!" I responded. "I didn't ask you how long you have existed as a breathing, functioning member of the human race. I wanted you to tell me how long you have been really alive."

I could tell that this poor, besieged student was befuddled. I sensed he had some inkling of what I was getting at. But he wasn't sure. I knew he needed some help.

"When I was twelve years old," I told him, "I was taken to New York. It was one of those cultural enrichment trips that was designed to broaden the experiences of the sixth-grade class. There must have been close to forty of us in the group, although I don't remember enough about it to say for sure. What I do remember was being on the observation deck near the top of the Empire State Building. I had been running around chasing somebody just for the fun of it, as kids on a school trip are prone to do, when I stopped, went over to the guardrail, took hold of it, and gazed over the city.

"I remember that moment vividly. Everything around me seemed to drop away. A strange stillness drowned out the noise of the other kids. For me that moment belonged to another dimension of time and space. And I took it in-that incredible city, sprawled out before me with its towers of concrete and glass. There was an awesome expanse of what seemed to be a vast, miniaturized, make-believe, toy world. It was like looking at one of those model railroad displays you see in department stores at Christmas, only infinitely larger.

"I was awestruck! Full of wonder! And I remember saying these simple words to myself: Tony! You are on top of the Empire State Building.

"It was with a heightened awareness, a hyper-intensive consciousness, that I held that moment far too wonderful to describe. In a mystical way, I stepped outside of myself at that moment and reflected upon myself experiencing it.

"I do not know how long I will live," I told my student, "but if I were to live a million years, I would remember that moment, because I truly lived it."

"Now, let me ask you the question again," I said. "How long have you lived?"

The young man had been moved to serious reflection, and he responded very slowly, as though he were carefully weighing each word of his answer: "When you talk about living like you lived that particular moment in New York, maybe a minute. Maybe two! I mean, if I were to add up all those times when I experienced life with that kind of heightened awareness, they are not likely to come out to much more than that!"

Then he added a regretful afterthought. "When I stop to think about it, most of my life has been the meaningless passage of time between all too few moments when I have really been alive."

the May cover of the Boston magazine