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Leave Open
For most of his adult life, Martin believed making the most of life meant fitting in as much as possible. His calendar proved it. Work, family dinners, errands, appointments and weekend plans — even relaxation had a time beside it.
Martin was sixty-two, dependable and permanently five minutes early. His wife, Helen, used to tease him: “One day you’ll schedule spontaneous happiness between 3:15 and 3:45.”
Helen had been gone for three years.
After she died, his calendar became even fuller. A quiet afternoon became gardening, shopping or reorganising something already organised.
He told himself he was making the most of life.
One Thursday, his daughter Sophie rang.
“Dad, are you free Saturday?”
Martin opened his calendar.
“You’re actually checking, aren’t you?”
She only wanted lunch. Martin said, “I could do twelve-fifteen.”
Sophie sighed. “Dad, I wasn’t trying to book a dental appointment.”
That Saturday, Martin left home at 7:45. Seven minutes later, his car refused to start.
Martin cancelled plans and sat on the front step. He checked the news and his calendar until his phone battery died.
“No car. No phone,” he muttered. “Excellent.”
With nothing else to do, he looked across the street. A father was helping his son learn to ride a bicycle. The boy fell into the grass, jumped up laughing and shouted, “Again!”
Then Martin noticed the scent of jasmine beside the verandah.
Helen had loved that jasmine.
He remembered a Sunday years earlier when she had convinced him to abandon his jobs and drive to the coast. They ate fish and chips by the water and laughed at gulls stealing food from tourists.
Nothing important had happened, yet he remembered almost every detail.
When the mechanic arrived, Martin asked how long the repair would take.
“I can replace the battery now.”
Martin checked his watch, then stopped.
“Take your time.”
When the car was fixed, he could still have rescued his schedule. Instead, he went inside, made tea and noticed an old photograph of Helen and Sophie laughing together.
He called Sophie.
“What time is lunch?”
“I thought you were busy.”
“I was. Now I’m not.”
“Come whenever you like.”
Martin arrived at eleven. They sat outside with coffee. Lunch happened when they became hungry. Nobody checked the time.
Sophie spoke about a difficult decision. Normally Martin would have offered solutions.
But he remembered something Helen used to say: not every silence needs filling.
So he listened.
Eventually Sophie smiled. “You haven’t told me what I should do.”
“Would you like me to?”
She thought about it. “No.”
“Then I won’t.”
On the drive home, Martin stopped at a small park he had passed hundreds of times. He sat on a bench and felt he should be doing something.
Then he realised how absurd that was.
So he did nothing.
Or rather, he noticed.
Two teenagers shared chips. An elderly man threw a ball for a reluctant dog. Sunlight moved across the pond.
None of it had required planning.
And Martin realised that life had been happening while he was organising it.
That evening he opened his calendar. The following Saturday had six entries.
Martin deleted one.
Then another.
He stared at the empty afternoon.
Instead, he typed two words:
Leave open.
He did not abandon responsibility. But he began asking a different question.
Not, “How much can I fit into today?”
But, “What am I creating with today?”
When a shop assistant made a mistake, he could create embarrassment or patience. He chose patience.
When his sister repeated a story he had heard five times, he could create irritation or warmth. He listened again.
When he woke exhausted one morning, he went back to bed for an hour.
The world survived.
Slowly, Martin understood that every day was shaped by small choices. A word could create tension or ease. A response could create distance or understanding. A pause could create space.
Even rest created something. It restored what constant effort slowly spent.
Months later, Sophie found him sitting beneath the jasmine with a closed book on his lap.
“What are you doing?”
Martin smiled. “Nothing.”
“What’s next?”
He looked across the garden.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie laughed. “Who are you, and what have you done with my father?”
They sat quietly together as the jasmine moved in the breeze.
Martin finally understood that a full calendar and a full life were not the same thing.
Making the most of life was not about doing everything. It was about being awake to what we are creating while we are here.
Peace or worry. Kindness or hurt. Connection or distance. Gratitude or dissatisfaction.
We cannot control everything life places before us. Plans change. Bodies tire. Life interrupts.
But we can still choose what we add.
A little more patience. A little more kindness. A little more gratitude. A little more light.
Perhaps a meaningful life is not one in which every space has been filled, but one in which we have learned what is worth placing there.
The Life We Are Creating While We Are Living It
There is an interesting phrase at the beginning of this service: make the very most of life.
At first, those words can sound as though we should do more, travel more, achieve more and squeeze as much as possible into the time we have. But perhaps making the most of life is not about filling every moment. Perhaps it is about becoming more conscious of what we are creating while we are living it.
Every day, through our thoughts, words, reactions and attitudes, we create something. We may not be able to control everything that arrives at our door. Plans change. People disappoint us. Bodies become tired. Difficulties come that we did not ask for.
But something still remains within our hands: how we choose to meet what comes.
We can add more worry to something already difficult, or create a little space around it. We can answer irritation with irritation, or interrupt it with patience. A careless word can make someone feel smaller, while a gentle one can leave them feeling seen and valued.
So perhaps one of the most useful questions we can ask is: what am I creating within myself and sharing with the world today?
Not simply, what did I achieve? Or how much did I get done? But what did my presence create? Did I create calm or pressure? Laughter or tension? Understanding or distance? Did I help someone feel heard? Did I leave a little more kindness behind than I found?
There is another important part of this teaching, because sometimes creating a meaningful life requires us to stop.
We are often very good at being busy. We can even turn relaxation into another task. We schedule the walk, the meditation, the holiday and perhaps even the time when we are supposed to stop scheduling things.
Yet there are moments when our soul does not need another activity. It needs room. Room to breathe, to listen, to recover and to notice whether the pace we are keeping is still serving us.
Rest is not the opposite of living fully. Rest is part of living fully.
A pause can create clarity. Silence can create understanding. Changing the rhythm of our day can help us hear ourselves again.
We are also reminded that there is no single path to stillness. One person may find peace in birdsong, another in music, the ocean, a drumbeat or complete quiet. We do not have to copy someone else’s way of finding balance. We each have our own rhythm.
And perhaps this is where the teaching becomes very practical. We sometimes imagine that creating a meaningful life requires something dramatic. Yet our lives are shaped in ordinary moments: in kitchens, in traffic, at work, in conversations and in the way we speak to ourselves.
One pause before speaking can prevent hurt. One moment of gratitude can change the way we see a day. One decision to rest instead of pushing on can restore something within us. One act of compassion can change the direction of a relationship.
So perhaps making the most of life is not about asking, how much can I fit into it?
Perhaps the better question is: what am I creating with the life I already have?
A meaningful life may not always be the busiest life. It may simply be one lived with awareness. A life in which we know when to move forward and when to pause, when to speak and when to listen, when to strive and when to rest.
We cannot control everything life gives us, but we can influence what we give back.
We can create a little more peace, a little more kindness, a little more understanding and a little more gratitude. And when we are tired, we can create space.
Perhaps, in the end, a meaningful life is not measured only by how much we managed to fit into it, but by the quality of what we created while we were here.
Create with love. Rest when you need to. Live deliberately. And leave a little more light behind you.
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