This morning as I was driving to work I was thinking about a good friend who I had “just” visited. Nothing extraordinary about that, but what ended up being startling to me was this – what I thought had only recently occurred actually happened almost 3 months ago.
What happened to the time? Wasn’t it yesterday when I was lamenting about winter, and now the summer is rapidly passing me by? Where did it all go?
I was being hit again by the unbearable fleetingness of being. The relentless passage of the hours and days of our lives.
These moments stop me in their tracks, and I’m glad they do, because I just don’t like it when fully experiencing life gets away from me.
When 3 months go “by in a flash”, it’s in effect a subtle “devaluation” of that time. Nope, I wasn’t cheated out of anything – I had 24 hours each day just like everybody else did. What I needed to do was a better job of “absorption” – that is, a better awareness and savoring of my minute by minute existence.
How does that happen? It’s fortunately not that hard – most of the time. We just need to adjust our pattern of living to 5 simple steps:
- Stop
- Breathe
- Reflect
- Resume
- Repeat
My fellow yogis and yoginis would call this “living in the moment”. It’s putting purpose and meaning behind ALL of our actions, no matter how trivial or inconsequential they may appear to be at the time.
We can’t let time, and life, get away from us. Sometimes the fleetingness of it all is unbearable. But we know what to do. As the Yoga master Swami Sivananda so beautifully said,
“Life is short. Time is fleeting. Realize the Self. Purity of the heart is the gateway to God. Aspire. Renounce. Meditate. Be good; do good. Be kind; be compassionate. Inquire, know Thyself.”
Stop.
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Indeed! I hope that I can remind myself of this more often as well. It seems that we all need little reminders now and then to ’stop and smell the roses’.
Thank you Terry. I find the relentlessness scary at times. Really.
But, I must remember to Be Present. Only then I am happiest.
I carry a book with me everywhere ; Mindfulness for Everyday Living – thank you for reminding me to spend some time reading it today.