I was home on a rare afternoon during the US Open and I was channel surfing to find my favorite tennis players. As I passed through a soap opera, I was just in time to hear one character say slowly to another: "You don't have tomorrow."
I stopped. I was halted in my tracks by the sheer banality and truth of that remark. And I thought what it might be like if, for one day or perhaps even a part of a day, we lived in the present moment, as fully as possible.
"We look before and after, and sigh for what is not," lamented a poet. He is absolutely right. We are always looking ahead—is that why we carry planners wherever we go? And if we are not looking to tomorrow and tomorrow, we are looking back at what did not succeed and wondering why, or admiring our successes to offer self-congratulations. But how about the now?
Even as we speak it has disappeared into the past on the time line. Think about this enough and you can rapidly go mad. That is not my purpose, I assure you. But can we take the time to be in this moment, at this spot in our day, and taste it?
We eat as rapidly as possible so that we can get on to the next thing. Savoring our food is not part of the process. Suppose, just suppose, you actually took the time to taste what you were eating. Suppose you didn't spend your scant lunch "hour" multitasking. Suppose you actually lived each moment of your morning. I was going to try it, not today, but perhaps tomorrow, when I said to myself: "Practice what you preach."
So, this morning, on my day off, I set out to taste the day. I took the time to admire my neighbor's whimsical planting of a row of tiny scarecrows before his patio. I greeted a fellow walker who looked at me as I at him, and we acknowledged the beauty of the day. I encouraged a kindergartner and her father as their waited for the school bus. I noticed that the leaves are assuming an autumn tinge, something they didn't have last week.
It was an amazing quarter hour and, as it was all part of my regular trek to buy the newspaper, I don't think it added much length to the errand. What it did add was a whole new enjoyment of the day.
Why don't you try it too and see what you might have missed.