THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, EVERY MOMENT

The Most Important Thing, Every Moment

This is going to be a short piece because it is 7:30 in the morning and I still have things to do before the sun rises over that branch out my window. Let me tell you what I’ve done so far: I sat in bed and stretched, I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and I sat “you-know-where”. I let Margarita, the Chihuahua, out of her box and covered her with her favorite blanket when she jumped on her own chair. I fed the cats and changed their water, and I cleaned their litter boxes (the big cat goes on the little box, and the smaller feline on the large box). I prepared my daughter’s special nutrition, her medicine, and got her feeding tubes ready (her dolls sometimes are fed like this as well; it is so natural to drink your milk through your stomach). I opened the blinds, tied up the last garbage bag and took it out with the bin to the curve, I checked some emails and erased a bunch.

Then, in the semi-darkness, I went back to bed, just for a moment, just to regain some strength. My wife slept soundly; our daughter next to her stirred (she always comes in around 4 am and jumps over me to lie down in between us). I faced the ceiling and placed my arms by my side. Then it really dawned on me that we spend our lives running here and there, but rarely know what the most important thing is we need to do, at every moment. I don’t purport to be a sage, but what occurred to me then was genial. I became in touch with my life. I took a couple of deep breaths and became very aware of my entire body, part by part. I recognized I was alive, as an ephemeral being as well as an eternal consciousness. It was brief but profound.

The most important thing you need to do, every moment you can, is to recognize your life, both physical and spiritual. And perhaps you’ll do what I did this morning before I dashed to my other listed chores: I said, “Thank you!”