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On
the afternoon of her fortieth birthday, I called a friend
to wish her well. I asked about her plans for the
rest of the day and learned that a celebration had already
taken place. In the morning, my friend, her two
sisters, and her husband had risen high into the Kentucky
sky in a hot-air balloon. "What was it
like?" I asked. "Well, I don't know if I
can explain it," she said. "I was so
focused on the moment, when it was actually
happening."
What
I learned from my friend that morning is that sometimes,
to be in the moment, you must surrender to it
completely. That's not to say you won't remember it
later, though you may forfeit the chance to put the moment
into words. And although I couldn't say exactly what
my pal experienced that morning, I heard the thrill and
awe in her voice.
To
truly be present, one must live inside the moment
and experience it for its own sake. If you live outside
the moment--observing and explaining--you're no longer
absorbing and feeling. The moment breaks apart and
eventually disappears. Think of a movie.
Sometimes it's impossible to explain what you've
seen. On another level, though, one you can't
necessarily pinpoint, you know that once you begin
dissecting your experience, you take away from it as well.
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When
you live inside the moment, you break ties with the past
and the future. You put aside yesterday's regrets
and shelve the fears of tomorrow, because ultimately these
moments have minds of their own. And like sand
through your fingertips, moments can't be held for
long. Even if you only have them by a thread, your
moments are worth holding on to, especially when you put
them all together. After all, isn't a succession of
moments what our lives are all about?
As
hard as we try to hold onto our moments--recognizing and
honoring them-- it's still tempting, habitual really, to
let them go, to minimize their presence. Instead of
collecting them, we scatter our moments like marbles that
roll in every direction. It reminds me of that old
game, Hot Potato. Get rid of it, quick! It's
as if we don't know what to do with the moment, as if we
really have to do something with it.
Perhaps
our penchant for minimizing the moment has something to do
with waiting. As children, many of us learned
exceedingly well how to wait. Wait until you're
older, wait until you're bigger, wait until you finish
your homework, wait until after school, wait until after
dinner. We were told to wait a lot. So we
waited, and instead of enjoying the moment, we focused on
what we were waiting for. It's not surprising then
that we tend to downgrade the moment or miss it
altogether.
As
I get older, the moment has become increasingly more
important. When I yield to the moment, I stop
fretting and worrying about the future. I stop
guessing at what may happen and, instead, pay attention to
what's right before my eyes. Sometimes the moment
exhilarates like a bright and unexpected shooting
star. Other times, the moment is painful, as if I'm
getting poked repeatedly in the side.
A
few years ago, I sat on my son's bedroom floor folding
some baby clothes that he'd outgrown. I could feel
the sadness and regret creeping in, but I wanted so badly
to feel OK about the passage of time. I quickened my
pace to push the pain away. I wanted the moment to
be over. Suddenly, though, I looked up and noticed a
very blue sky staring down through the window. Just
feel it, I said to myself, as I slowed down, trying to
focus on the task in front of me. I held a shirt
close to my face and inhaled as deeply as I could.
My heart seemed to crack and fill up at the same time as
feelings of hope and loss collided right there in a pile
of little boy's old clothes. When I finally got up
to leave the room, I wasn't sad anymore. Instead, I
thought about the miraculous growth of a child, whose
shirt size is less about loss and more about the gift of
life itself.
I
don't know if you can live inside each and every
moment. But when you can, try to stop, look, and
listen long enough to be right where you are, not in your
past, not in your future. Just right in the middle
of a split second in time.
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