Category: Ordinary Moments

Moments

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Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

I have been moving along this road I am on. Day by day. Hour by hour. Moment by moment. I seem to respond to the moments most deeply because they tend to surprise me the most. For example, the moment, a week or so ago, that I noticed the great blue heron standing in the shallow water flowing from the stream into our pond.

The heron always catches me by surprise. You might think that after living here for 20 years, I would expect to see him. But I never do. Often, he is camouflaged in the reeds and grasses, his stick-like legs resembling the straight tan stems of the cattails. His body is the color of dull water reflecting the overcast winter. I’ll be walking along the path by the pond, minding my own business, and suddenly, he appears in my periphery. And I turn to look, surprised that I hadn’t noticed him sooner. Sometimes, I slow my pace or even stop altogether. And when I stop, he sometimes flies, annoyed by my insistence that I see him—even stop to take a picture like a gawking tourist—rather than pass by unobtrusively.

Sometimes, his shape rises out of the evening dusk as he stands in wait for a tasty dinner. One time, it was so dark that I only felt his presence. And when I shone my flashlight into the darkness, it illuminated his angles and lines, once again startling me, and I quickly flipped the light to the footpath before I disturbed him. I’m sure it was too late, that disturbance is, in his mind, my middle name.

But last week, when I noticed him standing in the frigid, half-frozen waters of winter, I was stunned. Last week, moments before the temperatures dipped below frigid. Last week, after snowstorms had blanketed the region with inches of snow. Mid-January, it would seem, would be well past time to fly a bit further south than New Hampshire. To someplace where the tendrils of ice and frost have a more delicate grasp. And yet, here he was, crouched close to the water. Pulled in and fluffed up against the cold.

The moments. Brief encounters with the world that cause me to pause and reflect and wonder. The moments push me to ask questions—Do herons migrate? And they spur me to notice the wonders of the world around me. The moments bring me back from my thoughts, my stresses, my worries, and my plans and they ground me firmly in the present. The here and now.

As you walk your own path down the road day by day, hour by hour, don’t let the moments pass you by.

This Is It

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So often we sit around waiting for life to happen—to us, through us, around us. We wait. We expect life to come. A new perfect job will come along. Fate will lead us to our destiny, whatever that means. Opportunities or people will cross our path. And so, we wait.

But this is all very passive. This is about all the things that will happen to us while we sit around doing nothing. Waiting for life.

This is not the way life is supposed to work. As we wait, we are not taking advantage of all that life has to offer. In fact, we are likely blindly scrolling the internet or binge-watching some mind-numbing show on one streaming service or another. If we look around us at any given moment, our life doesn’t look like what we are expecting life to look like. Therefore, the here-and-now, the this-is-it doesn’t get our full attention. We stay on the couch, bored and restless.

And yet, this is what is—the present moment. This is the best we’ve got right now. And it just may be that this is it. So… I have decided to approach 2024 with a This Is It attitude. Since this is what I’ve got right here and right now, there is no sense in waiting for what might come. I mean let’s face it… we all have a plan for what we will do if we win the lottery. But you’ve got to play to win, and I don’t play, so there’s that.

A life without lottery winnings is pretty much what I’ve got. This Is It. I have the moments and the opportunities that present themselves. That, a little bit of luck, and a positive attitude. I’m pretty sure I can fly with that. And so, I will examine the moments and the opportunities that present themselves. I will dig deep into the here and now and the challenges I must overcome. And I will recognize that if I seize the moment—and I do it well—I could be facing a completely different reality as this year comes to a close, from This Is It to This Is Amazing!

If you were to take your This Is It and run with it, how would you move forward?

2023_BlogPrompt #24 – Today

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The word of the day is today. What will you/did you do today? What will you dream? What will you see? What crazy adventures will you experience? As always, if you choose to take up the challenge, please add a pingback to this prompt.

Today’s sunset

Today, I dreamed that I was superman, lifted up and flying high on the winds of change. The things I once knew passed below me as I sped through the sky on the way to new adventures. My cape flapped loudly behind me, shaking off all the things that hold me back. Flight frees me to be authentic, real, and determined in my dealings with the world.

Today, I planted a garden, digging deep through the icy snow and tapping the ground, frozen solid from the bitterness of winter. The seeds were resistant, clinging to the warmth of my fingers, and who can blame them? What they don’t know is that spring will bring growth and possibilities they cannot currently imagine.

Today, I lit a spark of kindness in hopes it would spread like wildfire. A moment of thought and a simple act can change a life. And as it spreads, it can create a movement, a shift in the cosmos. Perhaps my spark will bring happiness to one or two or more people who are surfing the wave of good intentions.

Today, I spent a few extra minutes with someone who needed a friend to listen, to hear, to care. Words spoken from a place of anxiety landed in a meadow of soft grass and wildflowers. A place where worries go to be eased and hopefully forgotten.  

Today, I created a moment of magic. Or maybe more. There was the thought that surprised even myself. Then a conversation full of brainstorming and idea generation and moving forward. There was a moment of peace and a walk in the park.

Today, there were many small, ordinary moments. Moments that could almost seem like magic. Moments that made today a good day.

Potential

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This year, for whatever reason, I have been noticing pinecones—perhaps because they have been quite numerous, and perhaps because I am drawn in by their regular patterns and varied textures—the orderliness with which they present themselves to the world. They are all different—in size, texture, make up. Some are smooth and hold themselves together tightly while others are rough and open. Some have many small, flimsy seeds while others have fewer thick seeds. One day this past fall, I reached up to pull a pinecone off a tree, and it was so sharp and prickly, it dug into the skin of my palm. I pulled my hand away, imagining I might be bleeding—though I was not.

This morning, as I was out walking, enjoying some quiet time in the rather brisk air, I spotted a tiny pinecone, much smaller than most I see on my daily walks. It was about the size of the top portion of my little finger. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I might have missed it as I passed by.

But as I marveled at its size, I also considered its incredible potential. It may be small, but there could likely be a forest in this pinecone. If properly nurtured, its seeds could create several trees, and those trees could create many more seeds, and this would continue for generations of trees.

A tiny pinecone, the size of the tip of my little finger has the potential to become a forest. If this pinecone has that kind of potential, what might you become? And how might you harness your unlimited potential to create a lasting legacy?

 

7¢

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Sometimes it doesn’t take much to inspire ideas to flow. This morning, it only took 7¢. It was scattered on the pavement, a nickel and two pennies. Perhaps the coins were dropped unintentionally, or perhaps they were purposely cast aside. I have no idea.

Let’s be real, friends. It’s been a tough week. Deep, heavy events occurred here in the U.S. Events that should affect the entire manner in which this country moves forward. Events that should bring us to our knees. Events that should pull us together, encourage us to rally around each other and our political system and begin a long overdue healing process. But healing and working together would be arduous and protracted, and to be honest, I think many Americans lack the capacity to truly work on the issues that divide us. Attention spans are short, and people don’t see themselves as part of anything larger than themselves. These days, many people seem to be repelled by hard work, patience, and understanding. We have proven too selfish, too unkind, too hateful to reflect on the big things. To dwell on the meaningful. We are too focused on the newest cell phone, the latest version of a video game, the things money can buy that bring only momentary satisfaction. We have become shallow shells moving through time and blaming everyone else for the problems in our society.

But let’s hope this one is the tipping point. Let’s hope this is not like every single natural disaster, school shooting, raging pandemic, and act of terrorism in which Americans have been better at making excuses than addressing the broken. Let’s hope we do not shove this into the past and move on without looking back. Without learning important and difficult lessons. Without dealing with the core issues that created the problem in the first place. Without reflecting on who we are as a nation. Without a second glance.

7¢

I’m told people have lost faith in loose change. Coins are an annoyance. They are heavy. Noisy. Not worth the effort it takes to carry around. We cast them aside as soon as they come into our possession, leaving a trail of change in our wake as we move through life. On the floor by the cash register. In the cracks of our car seats and sofas. On the pavement in the parking lot as we enter and exit our cars.

7¢

It’s not worth much. You can’t buy anything with it. But loose change adds up. If you drop it in a container on your way into your house at the end of each day, it will eventually become something worthwhile. If you were to save 7¢ every day, you will fill a cup or a jar, and you might soon be able to buy a carton of milk. Or go to a movie. Or pay a bill. Loose change is only inconsequential if you cast it aside.

Come to think of it, this is much like small acts of kindness. They fill our cup. They help us to feel better about who we are and the life we are leading. They make us feel like we are part of something. Small acts of kindness add up to large acts of kindness and these, in turn, contribute to an improved outlook on life.

7¢

If you make a habit of saving 7¢ a day, your loose change will begin to come together. It will begin to be useful. You will have 49¢ over the course of a week. And at the end of a year, you would have an extra $25. Kindness is like this, too. If you make it a habit to hold the door for someone on their way in to work, eventually you will be holding the door for someone each day. Then you might start to say, “Good morning,” and this might lead to longer conversations and deeper connections. Pretty soon, you will be starting your day in conversation with new friends, and this may prompt you—and those around you—to perform more acts of kindness, changing your outlook (and theirs) for the better.

We all say we want our society to change—there’s too much hate… we are too divided… we have lost patience with others. But change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens 7¢ at a time. Small kindness perpetuates more kindness, and with a lot of time and tremendous patience, we will begin to see the changes that will shift the attitudes of an entire society and finally begin to make a difference that matters.

{Photo by Jonathan Brinkhorst on Unsplash}

Accepting Technology

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2020 Lesson Number Three: Technology is not always our friend, but we can come to terms with it

I do okay with many technologies, though I would never say I was an expert. I regularly use instructional technologies. This past spring, I did okay as I simultaneously learned several different virtual meeting platforms. For me, the challenging technologies are GPS technologies that require me to relinquish control in order to follow someone else’s directions to a place I have never previously traveled to.

I am a firm believer in maps and atlases and relying on one’s internal sense of direction. When I get in the car and I am not sure where I am going, I like to have a map and directions printed out and at the ready—especially if I need to double-check my route. Lately though, have been using GPS more often, and it makes me feel adventurous, spontaneous, and carefree, like I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl. I am not. Nor am I yet an avid fan of GPS. But I swallow my pride and use it because it is convenient and it saves paper.

I drive, and my Google gal narrates my trip via her built-in maps that are, apparently, updated regularly. And this is great, really. Except when she gets interrupted or distracted by a phone call, as she did back at Thanksgiving. While I was on the phone, she remained silent. Then again, there wasn’t much to narrate at that point since I was traveling on the same highway for several miles. Thankfully, my phone call ended just in time for her to continue my journey. I followed her directions (exactly, point-by-point), but when she announced I had arrived at my destination—a grocery store where I was to meet my daughter to bring her home for Thanksgiving—there was no store in sight. In fact, I was in a questionable section of a town I didn’t intend to be in. My “destination” seemed to be the warehouse of a moving company with lots of large moving trucks, but not much else. And there was no one around. Anywhere. I pulled into the parking lot, reset my GPS, and headed to my true destination, still 20 miles away.

And despite the way it might seem, that experience was a good one for me to have with my Google gal. That experience humanized GPS technology in my mind. It allowed me to see that I was right in my desire to have a back-up plan in place. But it also improved my relationship with my GPS.

Now, I affectionately refer to her as, “Girlfriend.” When she gives me directions (“take the next exit onto Route 2 east,” for example) I respond with, “You got it, Girlfriend!” When I cross a state line, she welcomes me to the new state. “Thanks, Girlfriend! You too!” I reply.

We have a new comfort level, me and my GPS. She does her best to lead me to my destination, and I, in turn, recognize that I may… or may not… arrive where I am going. But now I accept that any journey could become a grand adventure in an instant.

{Photo by Ali Kazal on Unsplash}

Blooming – 2020 style

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My Christmas cactus is having a difficult time this year. It has always been a late bloomer, but this year, it is really struggling. It has been pushing out teeny little buds that show great promise. Like many things this past year, these buds give me a brief hint of excitement and hope. But after a few days, they wither up and fall off. This cactus… it’s not even close to blooming, and I am wondering if it will bloom at all this year.

Truth be told, I have been having trouble blooming this year, as well. This year has been tough, and some days I feel like I just don’t have it in me to be my best. Some days I lack the patience necessary to think about tomorrow. The days blend together, and Monday becomes Tuesday and blends with WednesdayThursdayFriday until the weekend, and then the week starts over again. On and on and on it goes.

It’s been a tough year, but it has also been an important year. In its break from reality, its focus on silence, its fear of crowded spaces, this year has given us some much-needed room for reflection. I tried hard to take advantage of what this year offered, so I might be in a better space going forward. I refrained from railing against authority and complaining about not living life as “normal.” I embarked on a lengthy journey to reconnect with my self—the essential core of who I really am.

I’m not going to lie. This year was filled with tough lessons that weren’t fun but were very much necessary. It took a great deal of patience and tenacity to sit through these long months, especially when we began to see hints of how far we have strayed from where we need to be. Our goals and our focus have drifted away from being good people to amassing as many possessions and as much power as we can, no matter the cost. We have grown to focus not on who we are as people, but on what and how much we have. I have to believe this is not why we are here.

So I took this year as a correction. I am taking its lessons, and I am coming back to center. I am re-grounding and rediscovering myself and my mission for my life. The lessons I learned emerged—as many do—from loss, boredom, anxiety, and resolve. They came in the form of traits such as patience, resilience, tenacity, discipline, and a habit of self-reflection. They involve listening to myself in order to continuously rediscover and recreate who I am. And they involve looking carefully and paying attention to the little things so I will know better how to fill the spaces where need is great.

Stay with me for a few days. I’m going to take you on a journey through this past year and share with you some of the lessons that I have learned—lessons that I will take with me as I venture into 2021.

Loss

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Sometimes, I see something strange or out of place, and I am overcome with an inexplicable sadness. On Friday, I was out for my quick walk-before-work. A crispness has begun to creep into the air here in New Hampshire, and the cool morning temperatures are bittersweet. The close-to-home summer is coming to an end, and the leaves are beginning to turn color. The impending winter will bring more unknown to the year of the pandemic.

As I strode by the dumpster in my condo complex, I spotted a nearly new red tricycle abandoned near the fence. I felt an immediate ping of sadness. I recognized this tricycle, and in my mind, I could picture the joy on the face of the young rider. The previous evening, as I pulled onto my street after work, this tricycle was being enjoyed to the fullest. My young neighbor was speeding around our circle, laughing and giggling as his father and an older neighbor boy stood watch. Until dark, they stayed outside, talking, laughing, and engaging with each other and their neighbors in a way I hadn’t seen them do all summer.

Now, this tricycle was placed here for someone else to take, to use, and to love—a gift for another child. There is no doubt the next owner will make his or her own memories on this trike, speeding away from his or her parents and laughing all the while. The former owner and his family, off to new adventures thousands of miles away, crammed as much stuff as they could into a moving van and their two cars, but just couldn’t fit everything.

The sadness I am feeling is a sadness of loss—loss of innocence in the case of this toy. But increasingly in society, there are deep losses that affect all of humanity. Sure, there is the loss of the ability to navigate the world without consideration for virus and illness and germs, but we’re all figuring that out as we go. The losses that are hitting me the hardest are the loss of kindness, the loss of compassion, and the loss of humanity. These losses… they strike at the core of who we are as a people. They stand in the way of our ability to get along, to come together as a community, and to make the world a better place.

In this moment, the tricycle is symbolic of the all the things we’ve lost, and I wonder if we’ll ever be able to regain some of our childlike nature. We need to re-learn how to get along with people—a lesson from our very early days when we learned to share and take turns. Someday, I hope we can go back to approaching other people with curiosity rather than fear. With love rather than hate. And with joy rather than anger. I hope we can give other people—friend and stranger alike—the dignity and respect each of us deserves. Then, and only then, will we truly be able to live in harmony.

Moments, Masks, and Missions

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There is much to be said of the experience of living life. This whole slowing down thing has changed the focus of so many of us. Before the coronavirus shut-down, we were focused on some imaginary mission—reaching our goals, our children’s educational and athletic achievements, amassing money—that we forgot what it’s like to live. We hustled our children from one activity to another. They played baseball and soccer, participated in Scouts and dance, they painted and played a musical instrument. Until that all came to a screeching halt.

And now, we’re faced with a different reality. What would happen if we let our children (and ourselves) have some unstructured time? What would happen if we all had time to think and breathe and not be constantly scheduled for every minute of the day? What if we gave our children time to come up with their own activities? Time to fill in whatever way they see fit. What would happen then?

If we continue to schedule our lives so full—to carry out some imaginary mission of productivity at all cost, we are not allowing ourselves to live life. We are not teaching our children what it is like to pay attention to the world around them and be with themselves. We are not allowing them to experience what life throws at them. We don’t expect them to reach because we are doing the reaching for them. We are not expecting them to figure out solutions to their problems because we are finding solutions before they even have problems. We are not teaching them to fit their mission to their life. Because they are living our mission and not their own.

This weekend, my son became a college graduate. Just like that. No fanfare, no diploma, no walk across the stage, no ceremony. One minute he was hunkered over the computer finishing up assignments that had been four years in the making, and the next minute, he was a college graduate.

And on Saturday morning, we were faced with the task of creating a special day and making our own memories, however simplistic and disappointing. He donned his cap and gown, and we ventured out into the windy, snowy, never-a-dull-weather-moment that is New England in May, and we took pictures. Proud college graduation pictures. In some, he is wearing a face mask, lest we ever forget what upended his senior year and his college graduation. And when we went inside, we feasted on homemade chocolate cake.

Life is not in all the things we try to cram into our schedules. Life is in the moments—in the deep daily living. It’s in the things that go wrong and the manner in which we rise to the challenge to address them. It’s in the ways we grow and the lessons we learn. Life is not in the mission to accomplish, but in the mission to learn and improve and grow. Life is in the mission to live fully and to make the best of every situation.

Humor, Hope, and Haircuts

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My heart is heavy today. I have heard from several students who are in healthcare situations working with COVID patients. These are young adults facing the unthinkable—dire situations that career-long doctors and nurses have never before experienced. I am afraid for them. My heart is breaking for them.

My heart is also breaking for all the people who have tested positive for the virus or who are suffering with it. This morning, I received word that the wife of one of my students has contracted the virus through her daily routine as a medical worker. She is in isolation in a room in their house while he has moved to the basement with their two little girls to keep them safe. I have offered a hand in the form of front door grocery drop-off. It’s all I have to give.

After a month of social distancing, there are hints of hope in discussions about returning to normal. That is one moment of the day. The next moment is heartache in knowing that we are not there yet. In fact, we may be a long way off from “there.” We are HERE, and for now, here has to be enough. Here and hope. Because without hope, what do we have?

HERE, we get through every day with humor. Hope and humor go hand in hand. Jokes and one-liners and pranks. Everyday, there is something to keep me on my toes. We laugh our way through the long, lonely days of house arrest. Because without humor, we would have a boring, socially distanced monotony for a month or two or ten.

And every now and then, something comes up to shake up the routine. Today, I gave my son a haircut. I used to give my boys haircuts back in the early days of single motherhood to save a few dollars. When he started complaining about his hair last week, I checked the bottom drawer of the bathroom vanity, and sure enough, we still had our hair clipper. Today, I gathered all the necessary tools, and I cut his hair. Is it even? Most likely not. Is it shorter? You bet! Will he need another haircut next week? Absolutely. I didn’t want to risk cutting too much off. As I told him, you can always cut more off, but you can’t glue it back on.

For today, something as minor as a haircut improved our mood, gave us hope, and eased the heartache for just a moment. Tomorrow is a new day—a new day for jokes and humor. And a new day for hope. We are HERE, and hope will prevail.

{Photo by Marcelo Silva on Unsplash}