Living In The Moment

Several years ago, I had a very meaningful lunch with a close friend, a P&G leader.   She had had a very challenging year.  Her husband had recently had a stroke and her 2-year-old baby girl had been sick as well.  Blessedly, both her husband and little girl have fully recovered.  What made this a most memorable encounter was what my friend told me had changed in her life from before her husband's stroke to after it.  Before she said, they were constantly thinking "more, more, more."  More work, more activity, more is better.  Now, they are thinking differently.  They are living in the moment; taking each moment as it comes.  Treasuring it for what it is. 

I told my P&G friend I could resonate to that, particularly as I reflected on my going through chemotherapy for five months leading up to my bladder operation in May 2005.  Interestingly, I found I was then not only or even so much treasuring my own moments as the moments I saw other people experiencing.  For example, I vividly recall looking at people walking by as my wife, Francie, and I looked out the window of a restaurant on Lexington Avenue in New York. Seeing a couple walking hand-in-hand, I felt very, very good for them.  I found myself hoping they were treasuring that moment as I was treasuring mine with Francie. 

I then had to ask myself a tough question: eight years after that operation, was I still experiencing life in that same way? The answer was disappointing: "somewhat but not nearly what it was".  

There is still a lot of that "more, more, more" in my life, too much, probably in part, just to demonstrate to myself that I am still fully alive and capable and that I still matter.  Yet, I continue to realize that I must pull back and live in the moment. To do otherwise is arrogant.  It risks not doing what I do as well as I should and failing to enjoy each moment for all it offers. 

This is a challenge I continue to face. At my age, I realize even more that each moment is a gift and I must appreciate it in its fullness and its own right. 

My good friend, Howard Wells, shared a passage from Herzen which calls for living in the moment as eloquently as anything I have ever read:

"How rich is the human heart in the capacity for happiness, for joy, if only people know how to give themselves up to it without being distracted by trifles. As a rule the present is spoilt by external worries, empty cares, irritable fussiness, all the rubbish which is brought upon us in the midday of life by the vanity of vanities, and the stupid ordering of our everyday life. We waste our best minutes, we let them slip through our fingers as though we had an endless store of them. We are usually thinking of tomorrow, of next year, when we ought with both hands to be clasping the brimming cup which life itself, unbidden, with her customary lavishness, holds out to us, and to drink and drink of it until the cup passes into other hands. Nature does not care to waste time offering it and pressing us."