“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory.” — Dr. Seuss,
How quietly I
begin again
from this moment
looking at the
clock, I start over
so much time has
passed, and is equaled
by whatever
split-second is present
from this
moment this moment
is the first
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” ~ Omar Khayyam
Leo Tolstoy famous short story, Three Questions, asks three questions through the tale he tells. The questions are: What is the right time to begin everything? Who are the right people to listen to? What is the most important thing to do? Tolstoy provides us the answers: “Remember then: there is only one time that is important—Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”
The most important hour is always the present.
The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now.
The most necessary work is always love. ~ Meister Eckhart
Kalidasa
Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
NOTE: Now is all we have. It’s where we love. It’s where we’re broken. It’s where we dance, sing, and cry. It’s where we succeed and fail. When we get to tomorrow, tomorrow will become our now. If we live in tomorrow we miss life because life is lived now. If we live in the past, we live in what was once and will never be again. Live now. Love now. Dance Now. Sing now. Cry now. Experience it all. Don’t let a single moment pass by.
Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves
– slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life.
They may rail at this life — from the hour I began it
I found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And, until they can show me some happier planet,
More social and bright, I’ll content me with this.
As long as the world has such lips and such eyes
As before me this moment enraptured I see,
They may say what they will of their orbs in the skies,
But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
In Mercury’s star, where each moment can bring them
New sunshine and wit from the fountain on high,
Though the nymphs may have livelier poets to sing them,
They’ve none, even there, more enamour’d than I.
And, as long as this harp can be waken’d to love,
And that eye its divine inspiration shall be,
They may talk as they will of their Edens above,
But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
In that star of the west, by whose shadowy splendour,
At twilight so often we’ve roam’d through the dew,
There are maidens, perhaps, who have bosoms as tender,
And look, in their twilights, as lovely as you.
But though they were even more bright than the queen
Of that Isle they inhabit in heaven’s blue sea,
As I never those fair young celestials have seen,
Why — this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.
As for those chilly orbs on the verge of creation,
Where sunshine and smiles must be equally rare,
Did they want a supply of cold hearts for that station,
Heaven knows we have plenty on earth we could spare,
Oh! think what a world we should have of it here,
If the haters of peace, of affection and glee,
Were to fly up to Saturn’s comfortless sphere,
And leave earth to such spirits as you, love, and me.
Victor Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning, in speaking of responsibility, “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. . . . Such a precept confronts him with life’s finiteness, as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.” P. 112
NOTE: I’ve met many people who live with regrets wishing they had done things differently. An old Texas rancher told me, “Ray, wish in one hand and poop in (he other (he didn’t use the word poop, but you get his meaning) and see what you get first.” When we live in the moment, we have the opportunity to, as Frankl says, act as if we were living a second time and as if the first time we acted as wrongly as we are about to act now. By following Frankl’s advice we will live a life without regrets.
