Living in the NOW – Giving the Gift of Attention
Moments MAY become treasures, priceless jewels buried deep in the vault of our hearts.
He was sitting right beside me. He in his car seat, I in the seat next to him, and his parents sat in the front. He was four. He said to me, “Baba, I want to talk to you. Don’t talk to them (pointing to his parents); just talk to me.” Then he proceeded to start the conversation. He asked if he couldn’t clean my glasses. He pulled a dried clean-up wipe out of his pocket, I handed him my glasses, and he “cleaned” them, rubbing the front side of the glass furiously with his clean-up wipe, and covering the back sides with many, sticky little fingerprints.
I was touched. He wanted to be with his babushka, wanted to enjoy my attention and wanted me to enjoy his – and he wanted to be of service to me. He wanted to help. Cleaning my glasses was the best thing he could think of doing for me. So I took the newly ‘cleaned’ pair of glasses from him and said, “This is wonderful! Thank you! But you only cleaned the front. I’d love it if you would also clean the back side of my glasses, too.” I handed them back, and he proudly ‘cleaned’ the other side. We then enjoyed a few treasured moments of togetherness the rest of the ride home. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I was beloved, and he knew the same.
What part of life gets better than that?
Loving, and being loved – these are the moments that become Treasures, that give us worth, that bring Beauty into our deeps. And yet, how often we allow the Tyranny of the Urgent to re-focus our attention elsewhere, so we completely miss these moments. How demanding are our phone calls! How pressing the texts flowing in! How urgently our emails and calendars scream at us. And… how many treasured moments do we miss because we are not present to the ones we are with?
I want to be present to those I am with! I would not miss one precious moment of real sharing-of-hearts. I would give my entire attention to those I love, those I respect, and those I may learn from. Noise and news, busyness and techno-jumble, conspire to redirect my attention away from this wealth. But I do have a choice. I choose to live in the NOW, with those I am with.
Moments MAY become treasures, priceless jewels buried deep in the vault of our hearts.
Never let the Urgent crowd out the Important!
Yours for a return to grace, civility, beauty, gentility, and excellence,
Mary Alice
‘It’s all about relationships.’
