The Moment

Jackson Leathem

Have you ever just sat out in the rain feeling — and I mean, really feeling — every single drop to grace your skin; to feel — to really feel — each drop fall from your brow or your chin; you run your hands through your drenched, saturated hair, or sink your toes into the cold, wet earth beneath you just to be in that moment, to have that moment, to really have it?

Have you ever been so alone, but yet, so full of love that the feelings harnessed your being to take each new encounter with the greatest of enthusiasm, or with the most fervent of appreciation; maybe they made you never want to take anyone or anything for granted ever again; or have you ever been so alone, but so full of love, that within you there lay a desire to love fully and indefinitely to satiate the conquest of the moment within you, perhaps to fulfill to others the longing that you, yourself, have grown to know all too well?

Have you ever made yourself upset just for the sake of crying; to just let go and embrace all the pent up emotion inside you; to just BE in the ecstasy of your feelings, whether it be in happiness or in sadness? Have you ever just cried, perhaps, even to remind yourself that you’re really alive and that there are things in the world that mean something to you; to just cry, because life is beautiful, or to just cry because life is maybe something to cry over?

Or better yet, have you ever purposefully tried to fill your head with the things in life that you think you’d look back on in the moments before dying, like the things that made you happiest and all, like your memories of certain experiences, or your friends — your closest of friends, your loved ones, your family, your favorite music, or favorite moments that you had throughout your life? What innate feeling do you think you’d have in a moment like that? Love, sadness, joy, regret? Maybe it takes a thought like this to really wake you up to what truly matters in your life; maybe it takes a thought like that to wake you up to all you’ve taken for granted.

Life is a series of moments, each ripe with choices. We are all in a moment right now, but if you truly want this moment, if you really want it, you’d have to claim it; you’d have to BE it.