Milking the Meaning of the Moment

I decided not to go to a cafe today. Wanted to spend some time at home, in my room, on a weekend, for a change. I'm feeling very relaxed but sleepy at the same time. But no matter, we'll continue blogging today's article which will be a reflection on the passing of time.

I do not feel my age at all. Partly this is because the core beliefs of mine have not changed much over the past 10, even 20 years. I have gained a lot more in terms of knowledge and temperament, but I am still steadfast in my goal of remaining single, continuing my life as a secular sanyasin.

We remember our lives as a series of events. We feel that time passes quickly only when we do not have interesting marker events through a specific passage of time. Marker events are like, a change of jobs, marriage, deaths, births, accidents and anything out-of-the-ordinary that makes a deep impression in you. And your life is just remembered as a chronological series of such events. The less events there are, the faster time seems to fly.

Repetitive events or tasks do not register much in our minds. These become the background where the outstanding events stand out. Repetitions however build momentum. Repetition also creates habits. Habits are simple automatic 'macros' that get executed on cue. We can program the body and mind with useful macros by choosing what we perform repeatedly. When we go about our daily lives, we are most of the time, driven by such macros, contributing to the sense of swiftness in time's passing.

The series of marker events become the framework for us to recollect and to place the chronology of other less important events, when they are recollected. I would remember when I read Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, because I have a memory of reading it at the airport in Hong Kong, while waiting for my flight home, on my first trip there. I choose to read outdoors because of this--the location where I read a particular book, even a particular page is registered in my mind clearly.  

Some great memories I have: reading about the mutiny on the Bounty at the Day's Inn motel in Palo Alto back in the early nineties; The Unbearable Lightness of Being in my rented room in Damansara Jaya, Barrow's Boys while enjoying a stout at the Bishan St 22 food court, The Horizontal Instrument at a park in Geneva, a biography of Sukarno on the train to Bandung and Hemingway's collection of short stories in a waiting room at Assunta hospital, Petaling Jaya. Having books with me, enriched my life considerably.  

Nowadays I'd also bring along my fountain pen and journal with me--creating new memories by writing at different locations, capturing the rich experience of writing with a fountain pen on a fresh crisp page of my journal.  Pens, books and journals are my everyday staple.

Life is lived moment by moment. What matters most is the moment itself, like now. I'm typing these words, every word is roughly a moment in time. Each moment is infused with memory from the past and an anticipation of the future. Memories are the fuel that propels us into the future. But in navigating life, one must focus on the moment at hand to fully live. Even a recollection of the past is a present moment, fused with the intensity of memory and the weight of its philosophical meaning.

Milking meaning from each moment, would be a good way of describing how I live my life. Even the most mundane moments have meaning. Every day when I perform my job, I try to infuse each moment, even boring ones with some kind of cosmic importance. By respecting the moment, you are acknowledging life and allowing that quanta of time to be a pixel in your overall picture of life.

Blogging is a way for me to live life intensely, because I reflect on every word that I choose, and I infuse them with the emotional force of my experience. The meditative act of writing is a great clarifier and cleanser of the mind. 

Our lives are ephemeral. We knit our experiences into the fabric of time and make our mark in physical space by building, destroying and rearranging matter. We attempt to procreate for self-preservation. But all that, in the end is in vain. What matters is the moment of time when it is lived. So milk the moment for what it's worth--whatever it is, that is the meaning and the totality of your life.