Looking Forward

I was a senior in high school, counting down the days and hours until graduation, when I could finally shake the dust of my sleepy little hometown from my feet and move on to bigger and better things. To pass the time and to save a bit of money (and, as my parents said, to help me appreciate the value of a college education), I worked as a courtesy clerk in the only grocery store in town. My duties included everything from cleaning bathrooms to restocking shelves to retrieving carts from the parking lot, but more often than not I found myself in the front of the store bagging groceries.

She came through my checkstand on an ordinary weekday, a gracefully diminutive lady with pearly white hair and shoulders stooped with age. As she was leaving, pushing her cart in front of her, she asked me softly how my day was going. I answered with a smile, saying that I was doing well but would be glad when the weekend came. She stilled then, perhaps sensing the restlessness in my voice, my desire to move past this stage in my life, and peered at me over the glasses perched on the tip of her nose. "Don't wish your life away, dearie. You'll be my age before you know it." She softened the intensity in her voice with a wistful smile and continued on her way before I could respond.

At the time, I shrugged the moment away. Too busy looking forward to what came next, I thought of her wise words as a nice platitude, a trite cliché that had little bearing on life in the real world. And in so doing, I missed the opportunity to be fully present in that period of my life. So focused on college, I didn't completely appreciate the sweetness of those final days of high school, the comfortable and easy joy of being home, the opportunity for building relationships with family, friends, teachers.

I find it's an easy trap to fall into, this looking forward business, and I catch myself doing it far too often. Rather than savoring the gift of this moment, I long for the false tomorrow that my mind has created for me. Whether it's anticipation for the next stage in life or wishing it would finally roll over to five o'clock at the end of a work day, my refusal to be fully present in the here and now shows a profound lack of gratitude for the provision of today. Planning for the future and having hope for good things to come is all well and good, but my attitude should be marked as one of thanksgiving for right now rather than excitement for tomorrow.

And so I am working on living each moment to its fullest, on being continually, deeply, sincerely thankful for each breath I am given. I have but a few years on this earth, and if I only ever look forward, I will reach the end of them and look back with a wistful smile at the years not fully lived. Slowly, God is teaching me that every moment is a gift and should be treated as such. There are times when this perspective comes with greater effort than others--when pretty blue dinner plate collides with unforgiving wood floor and breaks in two, when work frustration looms large due to yet another failed compile, when I'm jogging and wondering why I'm doing this to myself again--but as I strive to be thankful in each moment, the future begins to lose its alluring power.

This moment, this place, this drop in the ocean of time is where I am supposed to be. There is joy to be had here, right now, if I will allow myself to be fully present, fully thankful for this second I have been given. I have no reason to live my life looking forward to tomorrow--today is more than I deserve and a blessing all its own.