"There is a moment in every person’s life when time stands still and nothing else matters. It is a time that can never be stolen from the memory or lost amid the chaos of all else around.
A playful child knows a happiness that no adult can ever know because their happiness lies in 'the moment'. Children have this capacity to ‘live in’ and ‘live for’ the moment, but unfortunately, there is a moment in our childhood when the door opens and lets in the big bad wolf. This is when we start to understand that lollipops grow smaller the more they are licked and that all money that comes out of a wall isn't free. It is the moment we grasp that creatures we love will one-day die. It is the moment we start to see a difference between ourselves and other children. This is the moment our childhood innocence is lost, only to return in moments of senile surrender.
As an adult, we should understand that we have choices. We can choose to live in the moment, dream of the future or dwell in the past. It is pointless to wait for a moment; you must experience it, not anticipate it. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that the essence of life can be captured in a moment's insight better than a lifetime's experience and the character of an individual revealed by one simple act. Forever is comprised of the now.
Don't let the moment pass by without tasting the pleasure of all it has to offer, however difficult your circumstances. Even in her housebound prison, Anne Frank knew how magical could be the moment when she wrote, 'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world'. We were given life from one moment of 'togetherness' shared between our parents and it, therefore, behoves us to find the pleasure, love and goodness in ourselves and our existence.
Take ‘love’ for example. Love is a moment of madness mixed with ecstasy in which we learn that the best way to experience it is to enjoy it. It descends on one with the illusion of being eternal and though we often find it difficult to know where love begins, it is easier to know when it has begun.
From the time I was eleven years old and hungry hormones raged within my growing body, I could hardly wait for the moment when I was wise enough to know why I felt thus and old enough to do something about it. Then, there was the moment of my first real kiss; not that mild touching of lips like the licking of a postage stamp, but nothing less than the promise of a lifetime experienced in the beat of a moment.
How many times after the death of a loved one have we heard the bereaved person say, 'What I wouldn't give for just one more moment of being with them to see them smile…hear them laugh… hold their hand…to tell them that I love them and that I'll never stop loving them'.
Finally, there are those times in our lives that I call our 'moments of wickedness', when we do something wrong and get away with it knowing that punishment will never be delivered for having been clever enough to have committed the perfect crime.
During my first marriage, I loved trees and my wife didn't. In the corner of our back garden was a beautiful sycamore tree of over a hundred years in growth which she was constantly pestering me to get cut down. Being a nature lover, I naturally refused. Upon our subsequent separation and divorce, as I left the matrimonial abode for the final time, she made some snide comment about it being time for the sycamore 'to go also.' This thought angered me immensely. One week later, I had a moment of wicked thought. I contacted my friend Keith who worked in the Planning Department at the Huddersfield Council and between us, we fixed it. One month later, the beautiful sycamore had a 'Preservation Order' on it, forbidding anyone to interfere with its growth and enabling it to grace the back garden of my ex-wife's house for another hundred years! It gave me a wicked sense of pleasure at the moment and for some time afterwards to know that when my ex and the new man in her life next looked out of the window holding hands and saw the sycamore, it would be me who they'd think of.
'Sheila, what are you doing in that bathroom. You've been there half an hour. Hurry up and come to bed, I've something to show you.'
'Be there in two minutes, Bill.'
'No need to bother hurrying anymore. Take your time; the moment's passed.'" William Forde: January 15th, 2018.
https://youtu.be/9ND3oghPL5M