“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe
In 2008, I am going to be here now.
When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day.
I want, instead, to live in Now. This moment. What does that look like? I think it looks like a lot less time on the computer and a lot more time playing Candyland with a four-year-old or making vegan cupcakes with a teenager or raking leaves with Mr Brilliant. I think it looks a lot like paying attention. I think, for me, it looks a lot like writing or being creative every day. Maybe it just looks like breathing deeply every morning before flinging ourselves into the whirling stream of our lives. It is far too easy to be swept into the competing currents.
As Thich Nhat Hanh has written, “Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”
Pema Chödrön has reminded us that Now is the only time. That how we relate to Now creates the future. That what we do accumulates and that the future is the result of what we do right now.
I asked Billy Collins (you know, we talk constantly) if death is the main chord of all poetry. “Yes, it is. But poetry isn’t a consolation for death, for the reality that you will die. Instead, it is an expression of gratitude that you’re alive. Poetry italicizes experience or brings it into sharper focus. It provides a fuller immersion into life.” Poetry is about seizing the day, but we only need “carpe diem” if we realize we have a limited number of diems.
A friend who plans conferences told of a speaker who is in his early 50s and whose keynote speech is about something he did when he was eighteen. The impulse to point to that One Big Thing in The Past is too great, isn’t it? What about now?
"My first book was a Fortune magazine best business book.” Or “I crossed the Sahara Desert barefoot when I was a toddler." Or "I invented bread."
It doesn’t matter. What matters is what you’re doing right now. Not what you will put on your resume from this moment, but what you will put in your heart. This will become clearer on our death beds, I’m sure. Yes, I’m sure of it.
Time is not money, it turns out. Time is life.
“Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find ‘tomorrow’ on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday’s defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, ‘If I had my life to live over again.’ Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” –Og Mandino
Now.
Nothing is worth more than this day when you are dying.
And you are.
Intentions: I’m going to take a positive pause in 2008, look to the long now, then be fully here now. I’m going to start slow, so as not to startle myself, by learning to simply breathe more deeply. Let’s go back to ourselves in the present moment.
From the last alphabet challenge: N is for normal
“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe 
