For quite a while, I’ve been thinking about doing a column on not living in the moment.
Everyone I know seems to think that they live in the moment – and that perhaps their friends and family members would do well to take a few lessons from them.
I am clearly in the judgmental group, by the way.
Every week, I send out my column around 3 pm on Friday. Here’s a couple of questions:
When do you read my weekly missives?
The moment it hits your inbox?
A few hours later when you are savoring your after-dinner dessert?
At a formerly and formally designated time and place?
When you start deleting your most recent e mails and remember it’s still unread?
What are you doing while you read my newsletter?
Are you in bed, feet propped up, with scented candle burning, soft music playing in the background?
Are you sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in a relaxed mood?
Vegging in your pj’s on the family room couch reading on your I Pad?
OR:
Are you reading on the run?
Reading on your phone? Laptop?
Reading while driving – even if it’s only during the pauses for a red light?
And are you actually reading? Just skimming? Glancing at every other paragraph for the gist?
These are not random questions.
If you are a regular reader of any columnist, think about how you construct your time and your surroundings in order to be able to read that columnist regularly. Do you routinely sandwich in? Give yourself a break, tune out distractions, compartmentalize your problems, thoroughly enjoy the experience?
What your answers are says a lot about how you live your life. Actions do speak louder than words. And actions trump intent.
How you go through your day is how you go through your life.
Always distracted.
Always looking ahead to the next chore.
Obsessively checking off items on your To-Do List. Always rushing to finish the task at hand.
OR do you savor?
Behold?
Thoroughly enjoy the activity engaging you at that instance?
Whether it’s a conversation with your kid, sewing a button on a blouse, dropping off shirts at the cleaner’s – how we go about the daily activities of our lives writes the chapter on how we enjoy each of the moments we are gifted.
Make it count. I’m watching you.
And Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor