So I’ve been away for a few days. My husband and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary. I know what you’re thinking because I am too. I don’t look old enough to have been married that long. It’s one of life’s great mysteries but I digress.
We celebrated with a long weekend in New Orleans. I didn’t do any writing while we were gone and, in fact, spent very little time on my phone. That’s sometimes a challenge for me. So much of my life runs through that small device. I really wish I could get away from it more. This much-needed celebratory weekend was a great excuse to ignore it for long chunks of time.
The Big Easy is an ideal place to be present. I had been there before but it had been a long time. A quick walk down the famed Bourbon Street will show you plenty of people who are definitely living in the moment. Though many of them live it up a bit more than I’m accustomed to, there is a lesson there for all of us.
Most of us, and definitely me, could stand to spend a whole lot more time living in the present. I need to be in the present with what’s happening in my world at any given moment. I don’t mean the world as a whole. I mean my immediate world. I have bad habit of getting lost in my electronic device and not giving my full attention to my husband, my kids or anyone I might happen to be with. I need to do better than this.
I’m setting an example for my children, and I don’t like the one I’m setting. I don’t want them to think that it’s alright to give only a piece of our attention to whoever is in front of us. It’s rude, and I don’t want to be the person guilty of teaching them that’s OK.
Any way you slice it, life is short and time is fleeting. I don’t want to miss what’s happening with my people by spending too much time trying to keep up with the Kardashians or whoever happens to be “it” at the moment. Even many of my real and social media acquaintances don’t deserve as big a chunk of my time as I too often allow them to have. A concert that someone I graduated high school with or the vacation photos of someone I used to work with shouldn’t get more of my time than my child’s loose tooth or my husband’s day at work.
Memories and planning ahead both have their place, but on September 11 of all days, we should be freshly reminded that the only thing we really have is right now. There is no tomorrow promised. God gives us this moment to do our best with.
Spending the weekend giving my husband my undivided attention was not only necessary but healthy. It’s not possible to give anyone all of our undivided attention all the time, and I don’t think we should. But I do think we need to focus more on our close people and less on what’s happening in the lives of celebrities and anyone we’ve ever met.
I’ve been re-watching the television show “Parks and Recreation” in my down time. I just recently watched the episode where Ben proposed to Leslie. As he gets on his knee and begins to ask, she stops him and basically says, “I want to take this moment in and remember how amazing it is.” She drags it out way too long, which of course makes it funny. But the point made is spot on.
Let’s spend more time being present in the moment with our people so the future looks less frightening and the past becomes less haunting.
