June 19, 2011. Written by Leila Ruth Novales
Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.
Fleeting. That’s what struck me as I thought about life. I had just come from the airport to see off a dear friend who was going home after a year’s stint in Beijing. As my younger daughter and I were riding the cab home from the airport, I was thinking how we had traveled this same route when we first arrived in Beijing. I remember how we had been in awe at being in another country. We had tried to take in everything we saw as our car whizzed along the highway at almost midnight that memorable night. It had been Dana’s first time to see snow. That had been six years ago. Just like that, six years had passed. And in just six years, so many changes have happened. In my life. In Beijing. In the world.
Fleeting. Fragile. Time and life. Come to think of it, there is actually so little time for all the things we’d like to do, see, and accomplish in this life. Yet, we squander time away as if it were some trivial, disposable commodity. Yet, once you’ve thrown it away, you can never get time back. It made me ponder on a line in the movie “Source Code.” “What would you do if you knew you only had one minute left to live?” asked Captain Colter Stevens to Christina Warren. People have said so often: Live each day as if it were your last. Maybe we can value life and the people in our lives better by upping it a notch and saying: Live each minute as if it were your last.
