My Dear One,

I lost my cat a few days ago.  Three months shy of twenty years old, that little gray spitfire.  She was all of eight pounds, but she ruled the roost.  Sweet to the core, but tough as nails.  She scoffed at the vacuum cleaner.  Thunderstorms?  Loud noises, like fireworks from the neighbor’s property?  That was nothing to her.  In her almost two decades of living, nothing shook her.  She was unafraid and joyful in her living.  The house is missing something without her in it.  Like a light gone out, the specter of her little gray self in the shadows.  I wander around, catching myself searching for her.  All the places she would rest and play.  But she is nowhere to be found.  She drew her last breath, and I will never see her again in the window in the sunshine, on her favorite cushioned chair, or on the stairs at night.  Twenty years was almost but a moment, and now, the moment is gone.

What is living in the moment?  It’s an oft-repeated phrase which seems to have found its place in our current society.  Words, shouted at us from the glossy front covers of grocery store check-out aisle periodicals.  Phrases such as “live in the present” … “be mindful” … “live in the now”.  Ever since these words started taking their place in the popular phrase clique, they have bothered me.  Again, not the words themselves, but more the fact that I am being told what to do, and how to do it.  Advice that works for some, but not for others.  And because I believe myself to be in the minority when it comes to such advice, I feel led to present my side of the story, the way I experience living in the moment.  It’s unusual; this I know.  But to deny it would be to deny myself, and how I’ve come to understand myself.

I understand the need for such advice given the way we as humans live our lives now.  Life is approached in too much of an auto-pilot function.  Too busy and too rushed, we plow through the moments on our way to the top … wherever that is.  I’m not sure we always know where we’re going.  It’s like the hike that has no end … the race that has no finish line.  It’s a sickness of sorts, not to appreciate the moments we are in or about to step into.  Enter the remedy.  The solution … to slow down and practice mindfulness.  It sounds good, but the problem remains:  this shoe doesn’t fit all.

For me – and I can only speak for me here as I express the way I understand such things – I find these clichéd sayings to be philosophically shallow, an immature understanding of what it means to enjoy life in the moment.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t enjoy the moment.  I’m saying that the thought behind the saying has no depth or meaning.  The way most people “enjoy the moment” is actually not satisfying beyond the actual moment they are enjoying.  For some people, this might be enough, but I have come to realize this is actually not enough for me.  It’s not enough for me to just experience the moment I am in, without any hindsight or foresight in that moment.  If it is truly enough for others, I want to honor that, if this brings meaning to someone else.  However, I desire to communicate that for some of us, what we are being told to do does not bring ultimate satisfaction to our lives.  “Living in the moment” is a very different thing for me.

When I was around kindergarten age, I was given a doll by my mother.  A doll with an outfit full of buttons and zippers and strings.  It was a teaching doll meant to give a little child practice in using those buttons and zippers and strings.  One of the zippers zipped-up a pocket.  Several years later, I wrote a note which I placed in that pocket.  I forgot all about the note until the day I left my parents’ home to strike out on my own.  I took all the boxes of childhood memories, stuffed animals and notes and souvenirs and dolls – boxes of days gone by.  I found my doll, but this time I was looking at her through my adult eyes.  Or so I thought.  Something made me look in the pocket.  I found the note written years prior by my ten-year-old self.  A note written in a child’s hand, but from an adult perspective.

Addressed to “someone who cares”, the inside of the note asks the finder to please take care of the doll, because she was loved, and it was signed and dated by my ten-year-old hand.  Ten years old and writing in the moment, but thinking of the future when the doll could no longer be loved by me.

I was never really a child in some ways.  I could always see into the future, and see why I should enjoy something fully, an understanding beyond my years.  I believe this is a gift.  To enjoy the now is to see the future.  To know where you’ve come from and where you’re going.  You can’t truly experience the present moment until you have full understanding of these things, the workings of time in your life.  Such was the way I always approached the moments in my life.  By forecasting the future I could live in the moment.  Because I could see into the future is precisely why I could enjoy the present moment.

Does such a saying make sense, my dear one?  Is this a difficult concept to understand?  Let me go back and speak of my sweet little cat.  Throughout her life, almost from the day I brought her home to live here, I was already thinking ahead to the day she wouldn’t be here anymore.  When I held her warm furry body, when I kissed her little white cheeks, when I stroked her soft gray fur, I was thinking of the days ahead when I couldn’t hold her, kiss her, and pet her.  I was anticipating the pain of her departure.  It’s a familiar pain to me; the pain of a loved one lost.  Once you’ve experienced such pain, it becomes etched on your heart.  The situations will not be the same, but the pain is.  In many of my moments with my little feline girl, I allowed myself a small degree of the pain in order to appreciate that moment.  By seeing forward into a future without her in it, I loved the moment more.  I realize this may sound morbid to some, but it’s not to me.  It’s how I live in the moment.

There is a childishness to those who only enjoy the moment for what it is, who cannot see beyond the present space and time.  For those individuals, this may be true enjoyment.  But not for me.  For me, I believe this experiencing to be only one-dimensional; a lack of a complete understanding of what I am experiencing … a lack of depth.  I liken it to the wish we have as adults, to be able to return to our childhood for just one day.  We say this, but we don’t mean it in the way it’s said.  We want to return to childhood with our adult minds, so we can fully appreciate what it means to be a child.  But this is how I lived my childhood.  In many ways, I experienced those years with an adult mind, because I was always thinking forward to the day when the moment would no longer exist.  Those who say they want to be a child again realize it’s only with the adult mind that they would be able to fully appreciate childhood’s goodness.  I believe I had this gift all along.  Other than the ability to have the chance to hug loved ones lost one more time, or to travel roads I may never travel again, I don’t think I wish to return to childhood.  I experienced it in full the first time around, and have no need to go back to live it again.

My mind is full of snapshots taken in the moments, years and years of photographs.  They exist in the photo albums of my mind, time turning the pages of each one.  My cat has an album of her own now, created by me throughout her twenty years of living.  Each moment spent with her was a gift, and now begins the future my mind had always envisioned.  Twenty years made up of droplets of time, each one cherished and treasured … moments to reflect upon for the rest of my life.

All my love,

Your Never Sleeping Beauty

But if the star should set, even while I am penning these lines, be it so; still I can say it has shone, and I have received a rich portion. ~Hans Christian Andersen