Yesterday while doing yoga, I heard a loud thud. I got up to look out the glass doors to see what happened. I saw a bird twitching on the ground and realized it had flown into the glass. It stopped moving, and I went back to my yoga mat. For the next few minutes, I kept checking out the glass to see if perhaps it had just been stunned and would soon fly away. However, that did not happen; the only movement was the wind rustling the feathers.
So having the contemplative mind that I do, I wondered why I was so touched by this occurrence. It came to me that what happened to this bird is the same as what can happen to any living being, including we homo sapiens. It was probably just seconds before that the bird was making a stop at one of my feeders to grab a quick bite to eat. He wasn't even enjoying the moment because the mind was focused on the next move. Well, it turns out that the next move was the last. This happens to deer, squirrels, raccoons, skunks, etc as they simply try to cross a road to get to their next task in life. It happens to humans as we rush from one place to the next and end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This leads to the thought of how important it is to live in the present moment because in reality, it is all we have. We would be so much more at peace if we could reach a place of living in the present moment and enjoying it. Instead, we rush through each moment just to arrive at the next task or event and some times that next one never comes.
We can't change the past nor predict the future, but we can live right now. It's all we have.
Thought for the day: The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.
-- Henry David Thoreau
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