Each Minute of Each Hour of Each Day

In our busy day to day speed-living, the real fulfilling moments of life are as of yet undiscovered, contrary to everything we think or are led to believe. We WANT to believe we are getting fulfillment, but are we? I think not.

By all appearances our individual lives, while arguably peculiar, are still very predictable. Days go by with no apparent change and we are lulled into a semi-stupor state of existence by the mundaneness of it all. We think we are progressing.

Driving to work and listening to the radio drags into a daily routine of zzzzzz and one day leads into a stream of days which becomes a gray area of passed months - and before we know it a whole year has passed…or years have passed.

It’s now February 2009 and yesterday folks were concerned with George Orwell’s 1984 or Y2K. Remember Y2K? We blinked twice and it passed.

How do we get off this Merry-go-round, or how do we bust out of this non-stop cornucopia of blitzkrieg activity and experience a defined sense of enlightenment? Do we need to shave our heads and don orange robes? Ohm ohm. Not me. Can we drive somewhere, get out and blam!, it happens? If it were that simple, we could buy it in the 7-11 stores by now and then it would be cheapened and undesirable.

I stepped out into the chilly thirty-eight degree weather Thursday night and looked up at the star-filled sky. On the horizon, the planet Venus was a few degrees above our beautiful crescent moon. For a fleeting moment I felt I was there with the ancients observing the same celestial display that held them captivated centuries ago. I was there, even though I was here. It was a special moment.

It’s all around us and it’s all going by and it’s up to us to seek after it. No one can do it for us.

Most of us greet each day in a series of sameness, never realizing we are living our lives minute by minute and the quality of our life is dictated by whether we choose to savor it. We are waiting for something big or someone special to stimulate our consciousness and each hour of each day passes without a realization that our state of mind is dependent on us and us alone.

I contend that a moment of blinding truth is worth more than a wheelbarrow of hundred dollar bills and that special moment, that moment when and if it is realized, is probably harder to attain than the load of money. Nevertheless, the money is what we are taught to desire. The great American industrialist, J. Paul Getty is quoted as saying he would give all his vast fortune for “just one happy marriage”. To him, the money, which he had fifty billions of, was nothing without happiness and happiness was something that eluded him. He chased the wrong thing.

Aside from a religious experience or conversion, or maybe a close call with the Grim Reaper, most of us rarely get a peek into real inspirational thinking and I am no exception. My friend and fellow columnist, Jim Finley wrote about writing something truly magical, if I may loosely use that term and I agree with him one hundred per cent.

Maybe, just maybe, someday I will write something that is revelatory and is passed down as worth reading. “Son, read this. It will make a difference in how you think”.

The great Indian sage, Mohandas Gandhi never attained what he was looking for, even though others gladly called him Mahatma, or Great Soul. Gandhi never liked the title, as he felt he didn’t deserve it and in all his works and wanderings, true enlightenment eluded him, according to his own words. The same can be said of Ben Franklin and Ben was considered by many, as the greatest scientist of the eighteenth century. What chance do we have then? Much, in every way, as these great men didn’t recognize it when they saw it.

I dream of the moment when a few divinely-guided chemical synapses pop inside my head and all the pieces of life’s great puzzle are suddenly revealed. Sometimes I feel like I am at the door, only for it to fade and I am left wondering if it will ever come back. The answer is so close, like a parallel universe, but unattainable and mysterious.

So, in the meantime, I will pause and reflect and maybe, just maybe…