People incessantly tell me that my problem is that I don’t enjoy where I am, and maybe you hear the same advice. Most of those people don’t recognize that they’re speaking as someone who already knows how. Most of those people are also people who are surrounded by a significant support network and/or people with a supportive significant other. Most of those people fill their schedules with myriad opportunities to have wonderful moments. Some of us cannot, due to responsibilities at home/work or due to financial restraints imposed willingly or not on our fiduciary outlay. Most of these people seem to talk about living in the moment only after they healed from the pain. The clichés are abundant, rife with logical fallacy, and often insensitive to the circumstances of those to whom they speak. However true or useful their perspective may be, since they come from a position of strength and talk about how they do it AFTER THE FACT, it’s harder for those still in media res to follow suit.
When I first entered high school, the only member of my faith my age was a young boy named Cody. About a year before I got into high school, Cody was hit by a bus and was paralyzed from the waist down. Moments with Cody were hard, because we were never just the two of us together. I was 14, and he required constant care, plus he couldn’t speak and I wasn’t always good at reading lips, so we were often frustrated by an inability to communicate. I tried. Honestly, I don’t think I tried very hard, but for a 14 year old boy, I think my feeble efforts were Herculean and heroic, and Cody’s parents certainly felt that way. When I visited Cody at his house, we talked about things he loved mostly, but they were things about which I was curious. Honestly, I got into stamp collecting because of him. We talked about stamps and stars and volleyball and dating, all of which were actually foreign to me at the time, but they were things about which he knew and was passionate. It’s funny now to think back and realize that all I know about all of those things actually started in Cody’s kitchen. It’s sad to think that a year after we started spending time together Cody died. After the funeral, Cody’s parents gave me something that Cody asked them to give me. He’d had a ring engraved with the initials NGU for Never Give Up, and according to them he wanted me to have it because I never gave up. All of his other friends fled when he could no longer come with them or do anything or even speak, and as arduous as it was to spend time with him, I never had. He had some moments to which he looked forward in his last year because he wasn’t alone.
In summer of 2013, I spent a week in Alaska in the off season. I had some spectacular experiences. On my first day, while waiting for my luggage to catch up with me, I went out to a glacier and just stood there while I watched it melt and stepped out of time. I have no idea how long I was there, because for me time ceased not only to matter but also to exist. I had no schedule, no responsibilities, no companions asking how long we were going to stay or any distractions. However, I pulled myself away from this nearly perfect moment knowing that eventually I’d have to return to “real life” and go back to Anchorage for my luggage, buy food, drive, pay for things, and eventually return to my life, job, and responsibilities in Vegas. I enjoyed being there, but I knew that I could not stay there forever. Eventually I would have to eat, sleep, eliminate, or at least move or, far enough in the future, I’d freeze to death. The worst part of it is that I couldn’t even share it with anyone. Sharing it would have disturbed it, and when some other people showed up and rippled their dissonance into nature’s harmony I reluctantly moved and went back to Anchorage to await my luggage. However, it’s a moment that I would recreate if I could but is so valuable precisely because it cannot be recreated.
As you know if you read what I previously wrote here, my beloved beagle died this May of testicular cancer. What you may not know is that the previous October he fell down the stairs one night and slowly recovered. What you may not know is that I started going home for dinner between work and my night labs to eat dinner with and walk him so that I would know that I spent time with him on days where I spent 12 hours working. Those were some very tender moments. I am not happy that he was injured, but I am happy that as a consequence of his injury we came together and became tight like unto a dish as he recovered from his injury. He was literally in pain. Now, I look back, and the moments were tender because they also reminded me of his impending mortality. I knew that any day he could and would die. I got far more time than I expected, but I went to bed and left for work every day with an extremely heavy heart. On my birthday, after our walk, I sat with him on the front porch outside the door while he gathered up the strength to go inside. We just sat looking at each other; I talked; he panted, and I was just there with him. It was a good moment, and one for which I am glad. I knew based on how hard it was for him to walk and how long it took to rest that he was fading quickly even though I didn’t know how many days remained. That gnawed at the back of my mind through the moment, and it made it difficult to truly enjoy it knowing that he could die at any other moment.
Neal A Maxwell once said that “Moments are the molecules that make up eternity”, and so it’s important that the moments in which you live are as positive and uplifting as possible. As much as we may work toward that end, many moments in our lives are also painful, difficult, and exhausting. Living in the moment is a great mantra that some people find more difficult to apply than to exclaim. Living in the moment is difficult to do alone. Living in the moment is difficult to do when the moments are fleeting. Living in the moment is difficult to do when the moment is painful. Not every moment is fun. Not everyone can fill their days with fun or uplifting moments. I know people who, when I ask how they are doing, respond “I’m currently between trials”, which I know is true even for people who seem optimistic. One of our security guards at work, who is one of the most pleasant people I ever met, spent about four months in a dour, dreary, depressed state after someone close to him died. He’s back to his cheery self now, but in those moments, I felt for him, prayed for him, and reminded him that I was there for him and glad to have him around. My life is filled with good moments. Not every moment is filled, and not every filled moment is good. I may not live in the moment, but I live for those moments and those moments make my life worth living.
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