Come with me. Just for a minute…into my office, over to the
bookshelf. It’ll be fun. I am going to look up a word that I use throughout my
writing: moment.
Earlier this week I realized I wanted to do a very tiny
exploration on this word. Of course, this meant I had to start with the
dictionary (The New Oxford American) on my shelf. Do you see what it says?:
* a very brief
period of time
* an exact point
in time
* an appropriate
time for doing something, an opportunity
* a particular stage
in something’s development or in a course of events
* importance
The dictionary goes on for quite a while in this vein, even
bringing in physics and statistics. (Ha! I’ll spare us both on these.)
Then the American Oxford offers phrases:
“in a moment”
“moment of truth”
“not a moment too soon”
“of the moment”
“not for one moment”
And my favorite:
“live for the moment!”
Neighbors in the dictionary include “momentarily”, “momentary”
and “momentus!”
What I take away from this quick hike through the pages
leading the reader from “mole to Monet” is that a moment is *short, *specific, *rightful,
and *very significant.
*Each moment is finite, in the schema of hours, weeks,
years, or a lifetime.
*Every moment we truly live within is one which we can also
identify (right there! see?) in the painting of our life.
*The moment, this
one or that one, has a place in the landscape
of our life; it is not random or inappropriate but rather shapes the quality of one’s
life (and perhaps of all Life). Every moment is a part of…Without each moment,
something is missing, the fabric of the whole is holey. (I want holy
moments, myself.)
*A moment
(particularly this one) is crucial.
I found a magnet a few years ago and affixed it to my
refrigerator; it reads: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but
by the moments that take our breath away!” And yet, I do not measure moments. I
wouldn’t know when “this moment” expires. Understanding a “moment” requires for
me hindsight, reflection. I can feel
a moment, though. And this seems of absolute import in the scope of my short
tenure as a human on this earth. That’s what the magnet is really saying to
me: Succomb
to each one, every tiny thing as it is when it arrives in the collage of my day;
allow my chest to heave and my lips to utter “oh!” and “ah!” Of course,
this also asks that I slow down long enough to notice…a challenge for a doer
like me. Yes, what “The Moment” (the specific one, each and every last one of
‘em) asks from each one of us is attention, presence, respect…to be noticed,
perhaps even without judgment.
This is my lifetime practice. I love to write the words, to
play with these ideas here in an unedited piece that I throw onto my blog like
a loaded paintbrush which will randomly fling colored, wet drops onto the page
when I wildly swirl its handle…The outcome I can never predict. But perfection
is not in a final product or outcome; the Beauty is in engaging the practice of
the moment: playing with words; ideas as
gooey as colors on a canvas; the moon in the instant it shines light from
behind the thick, moving, obscuring clouds; robins bouncing and plucking
through thick, wet grass. The moments that take my breath away are not
measurable by a clock, or a calendar; they are weighed by my heart and inner
wisdom which feels the valuable gift of each one that I happen to remember to
notice.
Thank you for taking this moment out of your day, to enter
my study and flip the dictionary pages with me. To which moment will you next pay deep and abiding attention?
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
