each moment is an invitation

Each moment is an invitation

To be present

Our life is really a collection of moments. Of course we string these moments together and create a story. We weave a thread through these moments. And yet the reality is our life is a series of moments.

Some of those moments are yet to come, and some exist now only as memories, our past moments. The key moment, though, is this moment, the present moment. This is where life is being forged. This is where we are creating ourself and our experience, right now, here. And whatever is happening in this moment, it is an invitation, an invitation to be present. It is an invitation to our awareness to be present with what is, right now in the moment: the sounds and smells, the tastes, the touch sensations, what we are seeing, and within our body there is a whole exquisite world of sensations, right now in this moment.

And all this is an invitation. And like all invitations, we might say yes to it, we might be aware, we might experience this moment to the full. Or we might say no, and go off into our thoughts, move away from what is into that other strange world of our own mind and its ramblings, the endless chatter, the repeating thoughts, the anguish over past events that we were not happy with, the desires for those things that have not yet been fulfilled. All of these take us away from the present moment. We decline the invitation when we are busy with our story.

And yet when we decline this invitation – if we are not present in this moment – we have missed a moment of life. We have not lived it. We have not experienced it to the full. It's one moment less in our life experience. And life is short. If we really appreciate it, how short life is, we would savour every moment, we would squeeze the juice out of it. Life is such a gift. This moment is such a gift, not to be missed. It might not necessarily be a pleasurable moment. It might even be a painful moment. And still it's an invitation to experience, to sense, to feel, to live. 

This is the invitation. It's being offered in every moment. It's being offered in this moment. Do we say yes to it? Do we live? Or do we say no to this invitation and miss life completely? This is really the crux of it, right now in this moment, do we say yes to the invitation, or do we decline it?