A MOMENT!

Enjoy The Moments Of Your Life.

All of my possessions for a moment of time.

Elizabeth l

Lasting memories come from a collage’ of small moments that occur everyday you spend living your life.

In earlier times, time was more of an approximate thing. Time was estimated by the sun as farmers worked their fields. Accurate time was within twenty minutes or so. “It’s around three, I guess.” Travel was by horse, train, steamboat or just walking along. Going any distance was an all-day thing anyway. No appointments necessary. Expecting someone to arrive was always within a day or week or two. They arrived when they got there. Later, time could be measured by listening to the factory whistle at noon, or the chime of the clock on the square or mantle.

While driving a cross country with a friend in 1962, we stopped for the night in a little town of Santa Rosa, New Mexico on historic Route 66. After we checked in to a little motel, we went down to the local bar for a beer. We asked the bartender, “What time do the bars close in New Mexico”. “Well, legally we close at one”, he replied. “Oh, you mean sometimes you lock the doors and keep on going?,” we inquired. “No, sometimes we close up at ten or eleven,” he answered as a matter of fact. Closing time was a non-specific appointed hour in Santa Rosa. In a small town things tend to go with the flow. Maybe we should be more like that.

Time zones were created by the railroads to unify a patch work of independent miniature time zones at local option in order to set some sort of order as to how what time it is. Of course this too has been altered by man with daylight savings time, of which Indiana does not participate except in the northwest corner near Chicago that does follow daylight savings time. So Indiana is the same time as we in Minnesota are sometimes and sometimes they are an hour ahead. Do you see how time confuses otherwise sensible people, and it is of our own doing not god who made the original product. Does crossing a time zone border really change the way you feel as you lose or gain an hour by crossing an imaginary line? Sometimes God must just through up is hands in confusion, himself.

God and the universe gave each of us twenty-four hours in everyday by man’s calculation. The difference is how each of us use those precious hours of our life. Time has become an issue of economics, rather than a simple fact of living and enjoying our God given life.

The work day is measured: We punch a time card; Extra work and hours are measured in overtime; Holiday and vacation time is accrued ; Quality time is our buzzword to our family and friends because we don’t have quantity time to give. Business appointments are made for specific times -- don’t be late.

Measure, allocate and accrue is what we do. We are always on the move with a deadline to meet, real or imagined. We have time management seminars, to help us be more effective in the pursuit of maximum time utilization. We have become a slave to time. Time, not money, is society’s most valued commodity, but we only think in terms of time is money. Time to our families and our selves has more real value because it is the more scarce, almost non-existent in today’s world. We have modern technology available to us that was supposed to lead America to a four-day workweek. What happened? Information, acceleration of change and competition took it away. We live in an age of the frantic pace -- harried and hassled to our heart and mind’s end.

We no longer take time. Time takes us.

When we do get some time off we are just as busy and time starved as we were at our work. We need vacations to recuperate from the never ending pace of the rat race. Living should not be a rat race. This is our lives we are talking about. We even need time to recuperate from our time off to recuperate because of a frantic pace to “get it all in”. Exhaustion seems to be our middle name. We hardly have any time for ourselves any more. We are no longer in control of our time. Time is allocated.. Time is scheduled.. Time is accounted for. Time must be made. Our economic worth is now determined by how we spend our time. Things other than the disciplines of economics should determine our worth.

Months, weeks, hours, minutes and seconds are the measures of time artificially constructed by man. Moments and memories are not. Moments and memories are experienced. By themselves, moments may not seem like much until we bring them up from our memories. In order to capture these moments of your life, you must simply become more aware of them. Take time to experience your moments. Our moments are ours alone. Moments are in our mind’s eye. Moments must be taken in, absorbed and savored. The way we look at time clouds the experiences of our moments. Moments get lost in our economic pursuit of time. Don’t be confined by your hours, experience the freedom of your moments.

Enjoy the moments of those little pursuits of happiness and pleasure. Hemingway once said that things in your daily life just happen, therefore, your pleasures must be planned. Moments may be little or big. All moments may not even be good moments, but they may serve as learning and growing experiences never to be forgotten. All lives contain good and bad moments -- it’s part of living. Our problem is that we don’t take time to enjoy the good and often simple moments. Simple pleasures. A cup of coffee and a warm fire on a cold and rainy day. A leisurely read of the newspaper. A hot bath. A good book. A wonderful short story. A walk. Watching the birds at your feeder and the squirrels in the trees. Listening to the roar of the ocean or the gentle rush of a brook. A snow capped mountain in the distance. A pleasant conversation and time spent with a friend or even a stranger. The serenity of a calm lake through the cool mist of an early morning. A warm spring day or a summer rain. A garden. A fresh snowfall under a clear crisp blue sky. A game of golf. A nap. A delightful meal. Holidays. A moment of reflection -- of remembering. Time with a hobby. A random act of kindness. A hug. Add your own moments to the list. Take a moment.

Take time to enjoy the living of your life, and do the best you can. Concentrate on what you are doing. Experience the moment. At first it will seem hard. Make yourself drink in and absorb the moment you are experiencing. Take time to slow down the pace of your life. As time passes, these small daily experiences will add meaning to your life, and it feels good.

Have a nice day and take a moment!

Sam