Blog 140 – 10.16.15

Someone has said, “It is not the number of breaths that make a life but the number of moments that take your breath away.” The people we feel closes to, those wonderful people who have touched and shaped our lives in the most meaningful ways, are those who spend quality moments with us and give us their time and attention.

When I was raising my children I worked long hours trying to make as much money as I possibly could for there was always it seemed another expense. And fathers and mothers do have a responsibility to provide for their family’s needs and wants. I remember reading at the time how few minutes of focused attention daddies spent with their children each day. It shocked me to realize that I too was not spending very much time focused on my children. I worked at doing a better job of that.

A couple of years ago a wonderful movie came out called About Time. I have a particular fondness for Time Travel movies. In this one the young man learned from his dad when he turned eighteen that the men in his family had a gift of being able to travel back in their lives and have “do overs” and change their lives and the lives of those they touched. This, of course, created many interesting, funny, and heart wrenching situations. In the end of the movie the lesson learned is to live the moments of life more consciously and thereby avoid the need to go back and change things.

We are, I think, all traveling in space and time. And, yes, we travel back and forward in time and even change the past and the future in so doing. We can change even our bad and hurtful memories by applying large amounts of love and forgiving everyone including ourselves. We can take the fear and loathing out of the future in the same way. But mostly we can learn with the young man to live our today deliberately giving it and everyone in our lives our very best. Honey, that’s when it gets good. The greatest gift we have to give is our time and attention.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White