Alive Within the Moments of Life

Always being where you are and when you are

By Orla on iStock (image licensed by author)

Being present in your own life is one of those phrases so overused it is meaningless to most people. So many books written on this subject, forever on the lips of every pathetic life coach, uttered by younger generations as they head to a beach to sit and drink, telling everyone I just need time to be present in my own life, again, a phrase neither understood nor correctly used by those swearing that is how they live.

I read the books when I was a younger version of myself, went to the workshops, and studied the concept of being present for years, but while I thought I understood it intellectually, and at times felt I lived it for a few hours, I eventually learned I was never close.

Being present isn’t just a mind game, it is a holistic concept where every particle of you is alive in the moment, where your mind, body, all senses and even your spirit are committed knowing everything that happens to you can only happen once, and to live at a higher, more aware level, you need to learn to savor the uniqueness of your own life and the experiences within.

One experience helped me break through and understand

Toward the end of my ten-year run as a ski instructor in Colorado, I finally felt what it is like to be so alive in a moment you become hyperaware of who you are, where you are, and who is around you. Our ski school had a tiring day during the busiest spring break weeks of March.

Two of my supervisors met me as I skied down at the end of my day, yelled follow us, and we again rode to the top of the mountain. We were the last ones up for the day, and as we exited the chair, the lift stopped for the night. No one on the top but us, the tourists all herded down, the rare quiet of a thousand deserted acres.

We climbed higher by foot up a peak a thousand feet higher than the lifts serviced. Finally, just as the sun was beginning to settle behind the distant peaks, we scrambled above tree line, a 360-degree view from over 12,000 feet up the mountain.

My friends broke out a few pints of good whiskey, and we sat on the rocks, silent, just watching the sky fade into darker blues… flashing yellow streaks, deep purples, then the burnt orange fading slowly into wine reds, listening to the wind, clouds passing through valleys below us, alone at the top of the world.

I wasn’t just there, I was more alive in that moment than I had ever been in my life. It wasn’t just mind awareness, for that thirty minutes or so we lingered I became one with everything around me. I wasn’t just looking at a once in a lifetime scene, I became part of it, part of the mountain, the snow at my feet, the cold bursts of wind pushing up from below, the warmth of the whiskey, the closeness of people I loved as friends, part of the universe, not just an observer as it passes me by.

Being present isn’t just putting your phone down and playing with your kids. Being present isn’t just walking with a parent reminiscing about the past. Being present is knowing, feeling, sensing and being so alive you finally understand you are part of something bigger, something beyond your own closed up mind.

Sitting on those rocks in the snow, time with friends, feeling so insignificant, yet so connected to everything around me, taught me to understand there was only going to be that moment, and while we could go back again, it would be a different time, a different experience, and we would be different people, no two experiences in life ever the same.

The experience shaped much of the rest of my life because I learned to see myself in my own life, to slow down, linger, feel, not just trying to intellectualize everything. Finally, the heart won the endless battle with my analytical brain.

Now, I try to hold on to this idea of being present every day I still live. I stay too late out with friends, I hug too long, always assuming this might be the last time I hold this person, I hold hands as if this will be the last time I will ever touch the one I love, this moment, now, this brief slice of my own life I treat as if it will be the only thing I remember a minute after I am dead.