Tick, tick, tick. Fall inline with that beat and most everything goes unnoticed.
Time is tricky and binding and incessant. It never stops, it never slows. It never gives you a second chance but the clock doesn’t have to be your keeper. You don’t have to measure yourself and your living ability against milestones, deadlines, and grandiose numbers.
If like me, you are sick of resting against those mile-high stones that are supposed to hold some great, alarming significance, you should try something less popular but all the more rewarding. It’s time to commit a capitalist sin and engage in the underrated practice of moment-to-moment gluttony.
Life is measured by moments, I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Either Ted Mobsy or some great philosopher said it first. We are indeed held together by a garland of moments but sadly, those moments can so easily go unnoticed.
The milestones may be grand in stature but it’s the small but mighty moments that give us momentum. Many moments ago, I was walking along a dirt road when a beautiful yellow butterfly joined me for a few strides until I felt a deep tickle of happiness. But then that butterfly, frantically fluttering, reminded me of all the senseless things I was supposed to do but forgot to. Some moments afterwards, I finished an exhilarating run by leaning against a car, counting how many orange orchids I could find before my moment of perfect peace was tampered with by a mellifluous breeze that turned blustery.
Moments have melting points. They drift away like wayward kites if you forget to hold on to the string of their being. You can’t be of the moment, in the moment, or nourished by the moments in-between if you don’t take the time to notice.
So it’s time to stop wasting away the minutes while you prepare yourself to crash into to the next milestone. Instead, it’s time to explore the space between the lines, those rivulets of unspoken noticings. They are papery conductors with no destination in mind and they are desperately awaiting your salute.
So how do you take notice without stopping the clock?
You start with those five senses, those five distinct compasses designed for learning, consuming, recalibrating. They are not meant to shepherd selectivity. They were not made to let potential ideas and mini revelations lay dormant. Instead of staring down the things that don’t need to be seen and lending an ear to sharp and hungry words, let your forgotten senses nudge at everything and anything that seems unimportant and unnoticeable until it’s paramount and pressing.
Fleeting moments are monumental if they push you off the fast track and pull at you in an unexplicable fashion. Something about the way that branch scribbles across the sky seems amazing and important but you don’t know why. You want to write about this strange observational moment but the words won’t come, not because you are uninspired but because you are too inspired.
I like to think that the most worthy of moments are the ones that lead to Dr. Seuss Syndrome-that inner dialogue paralysis that makes it impossible to describe the striking nature of something with conventional words. That something can’t be celebrated with a cake or party. You probably won’t tell your friend about it and you might even refrain from writing about it in your blog (haha). But even so, that momentary something stops you, swallows you, and sends your mind reeling. The most beautiful of somethings are underrated and have pet cats that get your tongue. They are moments of immeasurable quality awaiting your discovery.
It’s time to take notice of these moments that are pebbles compared to the milestones because they are only that small so you can pocket them away and bring them along on your great adventure down the beaten path.
Thanks for Taking a Moment,
Anna
Gobsmacked 