The Moments that Matter Most
It only takes a moment for a lot of things. It only takes a moment to consider someone else’s feelings before your own. It only takes a moment of eye contact and intention to communicate a wordless desire to a friend or lover. It only takes a moment to create new life. It only takes a moment to realize your life right now will never be the same from this moment on, and that this will keep occurring in a continuous cycle until your consciousness fades as you breathe our last breath.
Our world is a collection of moments that either define us or we define them, depending on the perspective and amount of time we give as the observer. It brings us to question, what is the meaning of life? What is our individual purpose? What is the purpose of life itself? Why is something bad or good happening to me? Is it fate or is it something of our own creation? As human beings, our greatest boon is also our greatest curse. The human consciousness and its self-awareness propels us to completely undefined realms in the world we interact with… but that darker half of awareness creeps up when we are alone and vulnerable. We know that this life is finite, while time infinite and we measure ourselves through time. Imagine what would happen if we stopped acknowledging the flow of time?
There are moments when we lose all track of time, and most of those moments are when we are so present and full of enjoyment or focus that time is irrelevant. This phenomena for me, occurs most often when I am with my friends or family. As I get older I realize that time is the only thing that really matters. We are all given an amount but that amount is unknown. How we spend that time is important because we spend it on moments and those moments are beautiful, sad, joyous, and frustrating. Those moments make life worth living because we gave them time.
An ex partner once asked why I did not get angry or show emotion for certain things. My first reaction to that question was that I just did not feel angry about them. My internal reaction was actually to question myself as to why was I not reacting? Did I just not care? Or was it that I was incapable of feeling anger? I consider myself a very passive yet empathic individual. That is very beneficial in confrontation for the opposing force but not so beneficial for me if I get walked all over. So I thought about it and it took a moment for me to realize that for me to be angry over something so trivial that my partner wanted me to be angry about, was just a waste of time. I did not feel that my time would be well spent being angry over the situation or thing that they wanted me to be. When I told them that the anger they were looking for would not matter in the grand scheme of things, they themselves became angry ironically enough. Clearly our values of time were much different. Or perhaps that our investment of time into that moment or subject were much different.
I have been in operating rooms with a patient’s life in my hands, I have been a coach on the sideline of basketball games with my players’ trust to call out the appropriate plays and strategies. I have been a player in sports with the game on the line, and my decisions directly affecting the outcome of the game. I have been at dance recitals watching my beautiful and elegant little sister perform at her very best, leaving her soul on the floor for all to see. I have watched my brother compete in swim meets and watched him grow and evolve into the stubborn ox he is now. I have watched my mother and father grow older and their love for me and my siblings never ending. I have watched my relatives die and said goodbyes to friends, family and classmates from their caskets, wishing I just had a little more time to be with them and spend my time more wisely. These are the moments where time is irrelevant. These are the moments where all we want to do is stop the flow of time and prolong them; so that we feel our mother’s kiss on our cheek a little longer, that we feel our father’s embrace longer, that we experience true joy of holding our lovers hands in ours, that we truly are in the moment experiencing life for what it was meant to be. A collection of beautiful moments and memories.
I write this knowing that it may not reach many people, but I implore the ones that it does…spend your time wisely on the things and people that matter most. Because this is a world of distractions that would eat away at the time you have to live those moments of clarity and emotion. The only way we can truly master our time, is to consciously spend it and not waste it unknowingly.
