She's well into her 80's, this wise, God-fearing friend of mine, whom I have grown to have a great deal of love and respect for in the 21 years we have worshipped in the same congregation each week. In our weekly chats before services, she often imparts to me some bit of wisdom that gives me pause - something I have not thought about before, or a tidbit of sagacity that I continue to ruminate on through the ensuing days.A few weeks ago, she mentioned the need to live in the moment. She talked about how at her age she finds joy and pleasure in the seemingly mundane junctures of time. The example she gave was of watching a crow eat a dead squirrel. As she watched, she was entranced by how God designed His world to work - how even when an animal dies, God sends in his own clean-up crew . . . and a very efficient one at that! Once I recovered from the mental image of this sweet, proper older lady lingering over such a gruesome sight, I understood and appreciated her point. She also spoke of how she wishes she had truly absorbed each moment of her life. "Nothing," she said, "is unimportant. If only we could always be mindful of that!"
I think in some respects we all can relate to her thoughts. We tend toward two extremes - either we wistfully look to the past, wishing for the "good old days," too absorbed in our memories to take notice of today; or, we take the "I can't wait" approach - one where we are always looking to the future for what will be. And in the process of those two extremes, we miss this - the here and now. Today.Now I do believe there's a place for looking back. We can gain a lot by looking at our past behavior and improving ourselves. That should be an active part of our growth each day - to look back, evaluate, learn, and resolve to be better today than I was yesterday. I also enjoy my daily dose of Timehop, which shows me photos that were taken on that day - some going back as far as 15 years or more! Most of those photos make me smile as I remember the people and events captured in the snapshots - moments that helped the relationships that I have with loved ones grow. That's another benefit of looking back - shared experiences make for shared memories which strengthen our bonds with family and friends. I'm thankful for that, but I need to be careful not to get lost in it.
There's also a place for looking forward. Planning is important. In order to be successful in every facet of life, we must be able to anticipate future events and plan accordingly. Without a forward-thinking mindset, we will often be caught spinning our wheels and accomplishing very little in this life. Similarly, we all have "big" events in our lives that we look forward to - we "can't wait" to... graduate, get married, have a baby, get a promotion, etc., etc. We "count the days" as anticipation builds. And, again - all of that is good to a point. But I need to be careful that I don't get so wrapped up in tomorrow that I miss today.
Sometimes life sends us reminders - accidents, serious illnesses, the death of someone we love (to name just a few) can abruptly slap us back into that "in the moment" mindset. At those times, we often renew our commitment to soak it all in - but then days come and go, we become mesmerized by the mundane, and we fall back into the same old moment-stealing traps.Orson Scott Card wrote, "She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.” I like that summation - even the moments that hurt or seem boring are moments to be fully absorbed.
Living in the moment can be hard. But my prayer each day is that God will help me do just that, setting the right balance between learning from the past and planning for the future, as I seek to be fully invested in THIS moment. Whether it's some of the moments pictured here - ones that I remember making that conscious effort to be all in - some big and some seemingly small. Walking on the beach with Lydia and discovering the joys of that through her eyes for the first time; celebrating Henry's first birthday surrounded by the ones I love most in this world; meeting a dear friend for lunch; watching one of my girls and her forever love walking hand-in-hand along the beach; stopping on a neighborhood walk to watch our resident fox; FaceTiming with my boy while he was in Guatemala; or just sitting on the patio with my forever love - actually, as I think about it, ALL of these moments are big ones for me.
I'm thankful for them all. And I'm thankful as well for my octogenarian friend who imparts her snippets of wisdom to me on a regular basis. Life through the eyes of someone who has lived it wisely much longer than I have is profitable for every moment of life.