PARTING THOUGHTS: (full story)
The
Power Of “NOW” ...
Sounds like a great title
for a book, doesn’t it —perhaps because it is,
a very good book about living in the moment.
This past weekend I had the chance to “live in
the moment” doing nothing more than spending
time with my son, Max --in London, England.
Even though mid-December
through January is considered “off season” for
most speakers, it is a time I usually reserve for
a great deal of writing, catching up, planning new
ideas, implementing others, etc. Overall, I’ve
been living quite solidly in the realm of deadline
overwhelm (decidedly a “future” place to be). Yet
I promised my son, Max, (currently 9 years old) that
we would do something “special”, just the two of
us sometime during this period.
Thanks to the fact my wife
works for the airlines, we literally have the
world open to us, even if we can only be gone for
3 or 4 days (deadlines, you know...) Frankly, I
was sweating “the future” contemplating how much
catching up I’d be able to do upon return from a
whole 4 days away. So when it turned out that we
couldn’t get on the only flight to Costa Rica (our
first choice destination), part of me was (albeit
guiltily) relieved. After all, what would 100
degree / 100% humidity do to my laptop (assuming I
could even find a place in the endless rainforest
to plug it in, and Costa Rica is about the
only country in the world in which Earthlink
doesn’t have local dialup access to the Net...).
Max was so disappointed that
he literally cried himself to sleep the night of
our planned departure and woke up to more tears in
the morning (I wisely held off on my
“disappointment is just a feeling” speech). My
wife, being the ever-cheery trooper, called that
morning from work to say that the flights to
London were “wide open”.
Now let me set the record
straight right here and now. Being a warm climate
person, London was definitely not high on my
“gosh, what a great place to visit!” list,
especially in the dead of winter. Thinking that
Max would share the same feeling (after all, he
had his heart set on the steamy rain forests of
Costa Rica), I casually mentioned that we could go
to London instead –if he wanted to.
Well, you never saw such a
gloomy, rainy sky of a face so quickly brighten up
like a clear day in the desert when Max realized
we could go to London (“the one in England,
Dad?!”). Let’s just say I didn’t anticipate this
sudden reversal of mood but there was no way I was
going to let him down again despite the fact that
we had to catch a plane in just four hours. Did I
mention that my day quickly filled up with
“future” stuff in anticipation that we weren’t
going anywhere? (Apparently I waste no time when
it comes filling up my “now” with the future...)
Somehow (with a lot of
wigging out on my part) we made it and in
literally just a few hours after deciding to go,
we were headed to the somewhat less balmy climes
of jolly old London! And, since we had practically
no time to plan this trip, we really didn’t have a
clear idea as to what we would do when we arrived
—a true adventure if there ever was one.
I’ll spare you the details,
but let’s just say that we saw and did just about
everything a father and son can see and do in
London over a 48 hour period. Max loved every
minute of it and thought that the people in London
were the nicest folks he ever met. And in meeting
Max, no doubt a few Londoners’ have learned that
not all American visitors behave less than
acceptably (to maintain reasonable diplomatic
relations with the Brits, I just kept my mouth
shut —not always an easy task for Moi).
Okay, even I enjoyed seeing
the sights and meeting the (truly nice) people of
London, despite the incredibly gloomy, rainy,
yucky, miserable cold-through-your-bones weather.
Most of all though, I treasured the time spent
with my son, just the two of us, regardless of
where we landed —something I will never forget.
As I write this, Max is
blissfully sleeping away his last night in London.
One of many such “just the two us” trips I hope to
have with him during our life together. His soft,
peaceful, even-breathing reminds me of how
wonderful and special of gift he gave me during
this particular adventure. He gave me the power of
“now”, the gift of knowing and experiencing the
only time there really is. |
