“Be in the Moment”

August 13, 2018 Uncategorized

“Be in the moment…” Such a simple request, but such a challenging task. If you’re like me, you feel like you’re always behind. I should be doing this, I’ve got to finish this today, and this other thing is going on next week… It’s so easy for us to think about the 5 million things that are going to happen, but we struggle to enjoy and live in what’s happening right now. Why can’t we just “be in the moment?”

I first heard this phrase my Junior year of high school from one of the leaders of our Hall County Community, Mr. Gus Whalen.

I was part of a club known as the Featherbone Communiversity Academy where we were encouraged to always take opportunities to learn, to not be afraid to lead, and to do what we could to serve our community. The program was founded by Mr. Whalen, and I can still remember every meeting started…

All of us teenagers in the club (made up of students from East Hall High, Gainesville High and Lakeview Academy) would pile into the space and Mr. Whalen would start by greeting us and then saying something along the lines of:

Forget what you were doing before you got here,

Forget what you’ll be doing later on,

Set your phones to “self-destruct,”

And Be In This Moment.

I remember thinking how great that was to start the meetings that way, and knowing that one day, when I was “grown-up,” I wanted to encourage others to the same. And it’s obvious to me that nothing had changed in the past five years. If anything, it’s harder to be in the moment than ever.

So, that’s what I want to do today… to challenge myself and to encourage you to simply be in the moment. As hard it is, let’s choose to forget about what happened yesterday, last week, last year, and let’s not worry about what’s happening tomorrow, next week, next year. Each day, we are given so many opportunities to make a difference, but our inability to carpe diem causes us to miss so many of them.

I don’t know about you, but I think we should change that. So… let’s do what Mr. Whalen said… (maybe not the destroying our cell phones part, but…) Let’s focus on today, and choose to be in the moment.