“Give a Moment of You’re Time to the Moment”

I was listening to this song by Gran Bel Fisher, called Moment when I heard this line that went:                            

“This could be the day you say you’ve always been waiting for
So why you passing by the time that’s better than the time before?”

So it got me to pondering on what exactly it means to “live in the moment”.  Also, thanks to Ryan DeBarr for the excelent conversation about this issue.

           What does it mean to live in the moment? maybe it means to slow down and not worry about whats going to happen. Jesus even told us not worry about tommorrow but let it worry about itself. However, its apparent that we’ve taken the idea of living in the moment and turned it on its head by taking it to an extreme. instead of simply living in the moment, many of us find ourselves living for the moment. This can be seen in our obsesion with what is “relevant” to us today, or with our never-ending attempts to satisfy spontanious desires and pleasures. The problem with this is that it places our sole outlook inward. Kind of defeats the purpose of the word “outlook” doesn’t it?

           This way of thinking and living gives barely a thought to the consequences of our actions for the future and future generations of human beings. How is this corrected? is it an unnatural unatainable thing to corect or are we on the upward swing? The very embracing of this in-the-moment ideal is causing those who have embraced it to push away and this is because it leaves a feeling of estrangement, a feeling of emptiness that is, at least hopefully, creating a hunger. This hunger can be observed I think in the growing environmental concerns of people which I think comes essentially from a desire to provide something for the future and leave them a legacy that shows the importance of care. But why the sudden change? The hunger is greater than ever. People can see the folly of living for and giving into the moment. But don’t get me wrong, moments are very important. Time is essentially the succesion of moments. If we think about it, as temporal creatures, we can’t live in anything but a moment because thats all that presently exists. Living in the moment is good and we are destined to and always will live in it. But when does living in the moment change into living for the moment? I believe this happens when we cut ourselves off from history. When a single moment is taken out of the context of the moments that have gone before, it is extracted from its meaning, thus providing nothing but fodder for the one experiencing the moment. This then has adverse effects on the future. Who wants to hear “Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!—” without knowing that this comes from Lady Macbeth’s guilt of having conspired with her husband to murder King Duncan? It doesn’t mean anything!

           This estrangement from meaning is what I believe we are on the upswing from but we are not there yet. We need to embrace our history, we need to not only know dry, boring facts about history but see ourselves as part of this bigger story. Only when we see ourselves as central players within a stream, as the inheritors of a story that is now in our hands, as part of the big story of the universe, then and then only will we be able to truly live in the moment, because the moment will have value and provide sustanence for future generations who look back to us and see themselves as part of the story we passed on to them. What chapter will we add to the story? will it be significant and show a continuity with the story we’ve been handed, or will it be a sound bite or a blurb?

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