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Living in The Moment and Beyond

Each day I understand my parents and grandparents more and more. In fact, I now have had a taste of what it is like to "get old." Yes, when I was younger I couldn't quite get the fact that people weren't born knowing everything, as some of us think when we are teens, but that living really does give us lessons that are priceless.

My mother was a quiet woman of very few words and could answer you with one liners that would have stopped the best politicians in their tracks. She knew how to give you the facts without a whole lot of debating on the subject. One of her favorite lines to her eight children, and many grandchildren was, "I don't want to waste the energy on this." I had absolutely no idea what that meant when I was a kid, but now I do. It is about measuring what you have in you and not wasting it on things that really don't matter. I think my mother was living in the moment.

I didn't understand when I was going down the sidewalk as a child, strapped to a pair of silver roller skates going a hundred miles an hour, how I would one day not be able to jump out of bed in the morning like a little cricket.

I thought my grandmother, who was rather on the plump side, had a different language from the rest of us, because she groaned every time she had to walk up a flight of stairs. I now not only grasp the language, but speak it myself.

When my parents would tell us to "run ahead" on the beach and they would catch up with us, they weren't lagging behind out of laziness. They were slowing down due to age, but they also were doing one other thing while the pace had become less hectic. They were soaking in the salt air, listening to the ocean waves crash upon the shore and enjoying their feet touching the warm sand. It was a moment, a memory, being made. They would draw on it when life got cold, the bodies got older and there would be no more strolling along the seaside holding hands.

There are many lessons to come out of the horrific damage done to the lives of our neighbors in Haiti. We have learned to once again step in and help our fellow man and not count the cost. Many have set aside there political and religious differences to work in union for a just cause. There have been lessons learned about not giving up hope when all looks without hope and many have cried who had forgotten how to.

It is also a wake up call for those who get out of bed each day and never think how death may come at that particular time and remove a life they have loved or take their own. While we walk the steps of our journey, living and enjoying the days we have, we must balance ourselves with the reality of knowing it will come to an end at some point. As alive as we feel at the present, our lives will cease to exist, for none of us can escape it.

For me, it is walking as closely to my God as I can now. I don't wander off the path as much as when I was younger, believing there would always be plenty of time to do what God had showed me I was meant to do. I stay in the moment to relish all I have here, but live in expectation of what waits for me when I take my last breath. My Creator awaits for me, when all it done here, and for eternity I will be making memories with Him.

It is the last thought which makes me understand my mother and father more since I have grown older. They were people of faith, never speaking of death as though it were something to fear, for they believed in an eternal life after this one.

It does not mean we do not live to the fullest we can now and it certainly does not imply in any way, that we use our faith as an excuse to not give all we have to our fellow man, the earth we live on, or take care of the bodies housing our spirits. It means we have learned to savor what we have in the present, but know that there is so much more to come. It is the best of both worlds, for it truly is two worlds. It is ours with Him now and beyond now to live with Him later.Who could ask for more?

God Bless- Kate Prado