Moments

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but the moments that take our breath away...

I had a moment at the weekend.

I sat there and looked at the person I was with and thought to myself: "This is something I will remember for a very long time."

It was fleeting - so fleeting I am surprised it even dawned on me. There were other moments - perhaps saying something else but I will, for now, choose to the remember the first one.

The significance of those three or four seconds made me think of how moments can almost be life altering. How we interpret slivers of time and the events which fill them shape so much of what we do in the rest of our lives. In most cases we don't even realise how important the moment we have experienced is. And for some people the same moment can have a completely different impact.

I have no idea, for example, how the moment on Friday will play out going forward but then if I did the significance - or insignificance - of that almost iconsequential amount of time would be lost.

Perhaps my fascination with moments explains why I took photography at university. What better way to capture moments forever? Photographs are simply moments trapped in a mixture of fix, developer, photographic paper and light - on both a physical and metaphysical level. What adds significance to them are the memories or emotions we attach to them.

I think our brains and hearts operate in the same way. We trap moments in time in our minds and how we remember them shapes us going forward.

I am thankful for the moment. It seems weird to be thankful for something that in reality is only a fraction of what I have and will experience in my lifetime but I have learnt recently that I need to appreciate the beautiful moments in my life.

I need to remember them so that when I am in a difficult moment I can reflect upon it and realise that it will pass and if I can make it through that moment I will have opened myself up to a different moment, more beautiful, more significant and more meaningful.

At the end of the day- perhaps that's the secret. Perhaps it's to live for the moments which make our lives better and forget the moments which bring us down. Perhaps we should live through moments which lead to pain. Perhaps we should live for the moments which take our breath away.