When working long days many days of the week, a person should come home on a rare shorter day, right? Turns out, that's not really the case for me. On the contrary, my long days have made me view the shorter ones as opportunities to get done all the things that tend to fall through the cracks, too many to accomplish just on weekends. So, with a vengeance, I shop or pick up dinner or get forms signed or go to the bank--anything that can be done in those free moments, because who knows when I will have such free moments again.
Seizing the moments in our lives may be one of the biggest challenges we face, and I'm not really talking about the moments seized for food shopping. It is things like this, in fact, that often get in the way of the real moments. Many a night, washing the dinner dishes takes the moments that could be spent finding out about a child's day. Picking up milk replaces lifting someone's spirits. Scrambling to pay the bills (even if it has to be done) gets in the way of paying attention.
My tendency to seize the moments these days comes from knowing that some things will never happen if I don't do them the minute I think of them. Now, it's just a question of remembering that the hugs and the talks are just as important to my health as that new carton of milk, and that the investment in being there for my family is as important to our well-being as the timely paying of the bills.
There are moments to be seized every day, whether our time is tight or not. Our challenge is to seize not just the necessary ones, but the important ones as well. Because, like it or not, we won't ever get them back.
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