If we stop and look closely at our lives, we can see that from the time we are born to the day we die, our lives are made up of moments – each one coming into being and then passing away. Our lives are a continual experience of flux and change with nothing static or fixed. This continual change and impermanence is a fact of our lives. Unfortunately our tendency in life is not to be open and aware of each new moment, but to either allow our minds to leap into the future anticipating what we think will happen, or getting caught up in the past by playing back old regrets or missed opportunities like an old tape played over and over again. But if we can become aware that all we have is the present moment before us, then this offers us the wonderful opportunity to be fully alive, embracing each new moment in our lives with all its riches, beauty, joy, and even the human moments of pain and sadness.
The poet Denise Levertov Capures this beautifully when she writes.
All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body- halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.