The Moment at Hand

The comment of a friend has gotten me thinking. He said life should be more about enjoying the journey than worrying about the journey's end. I replied by saying the journey is really all there is. Every moment we call the "present" is future to the one preceding and past to the one following. Life is a process of leaving behind and pressing forward.

It's hard to think of it that way because we're so accustomed to talking about the present. And maybe that's how we experience it, as the omnipresent now, our instant by instant awareness of the passing of time. But if "the moment at hand is the only thing we really own," then we do well to appreciate it because it is truly momentary.

What if today was the last collection of moments that we had? Would that change anything? Would we choose to live differently? Would we, at long last, love like there was no tomorrow because, in fact, there wasn't? It's not easy to live like this, I realize. It takes a lot of emotional energy to make each day count.

So, instead, maybe we make a few key choices -- or even one -- that reflect the desires of the heart. Then we make a few more and one day we realize the life we've thus created is far more the one we were meant to live all along. That would be good. I could "live" with that, couldn't you?


(The Wings of a Dream words and music by John Denver; image by via Flikr)