Facebook, today, posted on my ‘timeline’ a photo which I posted on 11 November 2011, a photo, dating back to around 2005, of two of my children (in 2005, we ‘only’ had two.). FB posted the photo ‘memories’ for my eyes only but I ‘shared’ the photo with my Facebook ‘friends’. In the photo, my son is about 7, my daughter is about 3. When I posted the photo in 2005, I added the following thoughts:
“treasure every moment as they grow up – every moment is a once in a lifetime opportunity – blink and the moment has passed….”
My thoughts today, as I look at the photo, the ‘children’ now 20 and 16 years old (I posted these words on FB today):
As I get older I am more and more cognisant of the importance of treasuring every moment because, as I said, “blink and the moment has gone”.
We have to live in the present, in the ‘now’.
The past has passed or, rather, we have passed it. I’ll qualify that: the past is connected to the present, which is connected to the future. The past, the present and the future, they aren’t divisible, they aren’t unrelated elements of time, it’s a time continuum….
The future, we can’t take it for granted that we’ll get to see/experience it.
If we don’t make an effort to live in the present moment, not only will we miss it but it won’t register in our memory. We’ll see photos, people will talk about past moments but we won’t tangibly remember them, we won’t be able to enjoy the memories – they’ll be like other people’s memories, we’ll rely on other people to tell us about them.
Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced “Thick Not Hon”) writes in his life-enhancing book, ‘You Are Here – Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment’:
“Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses. If you look around yourself with mindfulness (lots about ‘mindfulness’ in the book), you will see people going around like zombies. Have a great deal of compassion for the people around you who are living like this. They do not know that life is accessible only in the here and now.”
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