Thriving in the moment…
Dictionary.com defines “thrive” as “prospering, to be fortunate or successful; to flourish”.
I don’t want to just live to 105; I want to thrive to 105! The chapter I read this morning from Discover Inner Peace talked about being in the moment. There’s a lot written and spoken about that these days. If you’re like me, I take it in “in the moment”, but don’t necessarily practice it routinely. But as I read the book this morning it struck me that if I want to “thrive” to 105, maybe I need to be paying more attention to the moments and let them nourish me so I am some day a happy, healthy centenarian, not a tired, frail one starved by lack of attention to the moments of my life!
One of my intentions is to some day have my own home where I can have an office with a window looking out at trees. I want to have a table or desk facing the window where I can write while watching the trees…the wind blowing the branches and leaves, the birds and squirrels singing their songs and playing tag along the limbs. At this very moment, I’m sitting on my bed looking out my window; and directly on the other side of the glass is a huge evergreen standing guard over the front yard with ivy hugging its trunk. The house belongs to my roommate, and I’m in my bedroom, not an office; but what a shame I’ve wasted so many days with my laptop on my lap facing the door rather than the window! How much more satisfying and fulfilling the moments are this morning writing with a simple change in direction. Had I been paying more attention to the experience of the moments that made up my writing time, maybe I would have turned around more often, remembering how much more special the moments feel facing this great tree!
But maybe that’s part of the challenge, as well, especially as we get older. We don’t always remember the moments once they’ve passed. All the more reason, I guess, to savor the moments; because we can’t find solace in them once they’re gone, if we can’t remember them! Oh, dear…that distresses me a little. I can buy into cherishing the moments and not being distracted by what hasn’t happened yet or the boo-boo you made yesterday, but what about those great moments you just relished…what if you want to get them back…remember them again?
Maybe that’s why I’m a “hoarder” of sorts when it comes to memorabilia. Rubbermaid stock has surely risen just from my purchases alone, filling containers of many hues with letters, pictures, programs, journals, and other trinkets that have constituted the moments of my life. I was discussing this “habit” with a couple dear friends yesterday (Irene and Sharon). How do you let go of this “stuff”?! With a memory like mine (which wasn’t all that great even when I was younger…unless I was memorizing song lyrics), most of the moments preserved in those tubs would have been long gone. Why else do we take a photograph…a moment captured in time? So we don’t forget; so if we’re not totally in that moment or if we have crappy memories, we won’t feel as though we’ve lived our lives in a vacuum with nothing to show for the years that have slipped by too quickly.
Even though it doesn’t happen often, when I take a moment to pull a few things out and reminisce, I’m reminded why I keep the tubs full. Nobody else will probably care what’s in them once I’m gone. My kids don’t even seem that interested in the ones I filled for them with the moments of their young lives…the crafts and cards and school successes. They’ll probably open them up one day and say, “What in the world was she thinking?”…although they probably won’t use the phrase, “what in the world”, if you know what I mean. Maybe my granddaughters will care, just as I’m attached to moments saved from my grandmother’s life. Honestly, I hope someone thinks it’s a little bit of a hoot some day to open the containers and spend moments they can get lost in learning about my special moments. While I believe trying to actually live and be in the moment IS so important, being able to retrieve them…to me…is a strong second!
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I certainly care about your “tupperware maintained memories”…..as you know, we share many of them through our time with the kids. I keep the same type of memories in my own version of filing….and I look at them quite often. They are especially satisfying after a tough day or on the rare occasion that things have gotten me a bit down. Those smiling faces, those eyes looking back at us, those images of special times in the past. Priceless….Ageless….Special…..Forever.
When people give you the scenario of if your house was on fire, what would you grab….one of many things (after people and pets) is my treasure box. There are notes from 4th graders thanking me for being their Junior Achievement teacher, things like that. Mostly it’s the memories from my kids and things from my past that are significant enough because I’ve saved something so I would remember, though probably it wouldn’t come to mind, unless I’ve rummaged through.
I do think that your children will look through it though and take stock. The blessing would be that it was at a point where you are still ”thriving” and you’re both ”in the moment” with each other and you’re telling them a story that sheds some illumination as to the wonderful woman (and not just loving mother) that you were and are!