Take the Time, Take the moment

There has never been a better time to take the time for yourself.

It’s a Sunday evening. Slow down. Feel the moment. Look at the wall. Look at the way the light plays with the wall.

The window teases the wall with its lines. It does not have to limit itself, but it does.

What would it be if it were a different shape? Be silly, be playful. Ask yourself questions that have no bigger meaning in the world. Feel how light it can be, just for once. The answer does not matter. It could be anything, but it is yours. It has come from within you. It has called on parts of you that you met last when you were a child, or were playing with a child when no one was looking. The freedom of being anything, even nonsensical when no one is looking is precious. Breathe the moment.

It is not a Sunday evening. The pace has taken over. You are busy, you are important. You have things to do, people to please, everyone depends upon you. You matter. Every minute of your time matters. Especially this next one that you take for yourself. Take a breath. Take a moment, feel it fully.

Feel the pressure, feel the importance. Feel the need, the relevance. Feel each bit that makes you special to yourself. Feel your ego, feed it for a moment. It will bloat. This is not good for you. Inflammatory food, eh, but take a little bite. It feels good. Take it, you’ve earned it today. It is not always going to be there for you. Sometimes it will lead you to ill lit streets filled with danger. But for a moment, it is you, and your shadow is bigger than you had ever imagined. Take a snapshot of this moment, this breathless moment that would have melded with a million others if you had not claimed it for yourself. Make this a memory. It is what will hold you up when you think you have lost it all. When it is gone, or almost gone. You will take out this moment from your back pocket and remember who you were when you were this way.

There are other ways to be, you know. And you have been all of them. The hiker, the biker, the dancer, the writer, the poet, the painter. Some of them have been visited in your dreams, some you visit as audience. Each time you watch a play, or a movie, a concert, you are transported. This is another you. Take a moment, detach from the world you are experiencing and watch yourself with affection. With gentle amusement. What a pretentious ass you are, or maybe totally the opposite – a genuine connoisseur. The only difference between the two is how much you gave to the art. How much did you work it, learn it, engage with it, love it.

Feel yourself grow in love as you watch yourself come in as a poseur and then truly have a moment of connect. Take that moment, and fall in love with yourself again as only you can. Nobody else has seen the yearning in that moment, nobody else knows how much you were moved then – either to stay or to run away. This is your private secret. You will laugh about it to yourself when you are old. The taken moment remains with you. They will ask you why you are laughing, and your eyes will twinkle as you reply, “The follies of youth, my child”. They will smile and wonder at the player you were. They will not know it, but this is a moment for them to take, but they will miss it. You will not, as you smile at how little they know.

Take this moment once in a while. That moment when hot delicious food became a morsel in your mouth. When the sunshine fell across your arm. When a soft breeze wafted past, softer than cotton, gentler than silk. Take all the moments of feeling, and tie them together as you would dried flowers. Put little bouquets of them in hidden corners for you to find. Each time you look at them you will smile.

They call it by many names, but that bus ticket that sits at the bottom of my travel bag is one such thing. With it, I keep a crumpled map. I had walked a new city in the rain, a kind stranger had showed me how to use a coffee machine. I had placed the coffee on the map, the ring of the coffee stain still brings that sharp cold windswept day back to me when I was happy for no good reason at all, just because I was me and I was in the moment. The photographs I took that day are of people and places I found interesting. But laughter bubbles up within when I remember the moment I realised that the coffee stain had covered the very hotel I needed to get to. Little adventures of the mind, little posies of moments past. I have taken them all.

Take the moment, hold it warm. Cast it deep, let it stay, let it stall. Let it be within. One day it shall rise, and like all moments taken, it shall make your day.