The Little Moment

Exhaust the little moment. It is one of the best, and most beautiful things that we can do. As my favorite Latin phrase implies, “carpe diem” means to get all of the life offered in each day. It is to literally seize it for all of it’s worth and beauty, struggle, and being. And so, what if we also learned to exhaust the little moments too? And by exhaust, I mean to absorb it fully. Living the life out of each moment. Because, as Gwendolyn Brooks did say- soon that moment will pass, never in it’s exact form again. It will pass right before your eyes, so quickly that if you do not catch it, it may go unseen. Knowing this should be enough for us to exhaust the little moment, right? This seems like such a transcendent, profound thing to do. While yes, it is profound, it is also there, right there with you all day long. You do not need much to do this. All you need is the moment, and the willingness to open yourself to it.

I think what gets in many people’s way is that they think that in order to fully “carpe” their “diem”, their day has to be flawless. Well, while yes, there are certainly those days that go so perfectly, they seem almost unreal. But if you wait to live with your “living in the moment” attitude for only these days, you may be waiting for a while in between. At the end of the day, it is in fact the little moments that make life worth living. Grand moments are amazing, and wildly important too, but it is what happens in between those larger-than-life moments that teach us why we are here. Maybe the secret to living an extraordinary life is knowing this and in turn making these moments meaningful. While none of us really know the secret, maybe that is part of why we are all here- to figure it out. It is finding the life, the beauty, the meaning, and the connection in all of it. And since we cannot get back moments that have already passed, we must be present to them before they do, so that we can experience them for all that they are.

The moments we are given in our life are meant to be LIVED. Find the life in all of them. And find the humor in as many as you can. Be it beauty, love, or hardship, know that it is all put there for reasons greater than we can or should know. But it is all meant to add to the story that is our life. Lighten up the moment, but deepen it when it needs to be.

You will start to see that moments are constantly alive, all around us, all day long. When we open ourselves up to them, we realize that there are lots to go around. You will see that even in these days, as the world is living in unusual, unprecedented, and uncertain times- the moments are still there. They may seem even smaller, but they are there. 

Live them.