Flash Forward

I've always been one of those people that's had trouble living in the moment. I guess that's something everyone struggles with, but for someone whose life has been as rich in experiences and people as mine has been, I've found those moments surprisingly hard to hold on to and call back to mind, because I'm not sure I ever was fully inside them when they were happening.

While I was in the desert over the weekend, turning these thoughts over in my head before sleep, I had one of those flashes that changes the way you look at everything.

Everything around you, everyone you are with, everything that you are doing right now, one day will be gone, and you will wish you could be in this moment right now again.

Something about that idea shifted my whole environment into focus. We spend our lives thinking of contingencies that will protect us from loss, recoiling from love through fear, or perhaps embracing the wrong kind of love in a desperate play for security.

But it's futile. Everything in your life now will one day be gone. Either that, or you will. And at some point, on this side of the grave or the other, you will miss something about the place and time and people around you, right now.

Something about that thought put me, perhaps for the first time, squarely in the here and now. It made my hugs a little longer and tighter, and my breaths a little deeper. And sleep came easier.