I Hope You Choose To Live Life For This Moment

Traffic lights, paved crosswalks, radio pop songs precipitating in sync with raindrops, mile-marked highways saturated with memories long gone—places that carry us, but never quite hold us. I think the same can be said about the kind of hope we often have for our future self. There is always an end goal—the version of ‘self’ we think will have it all. Maturity. Recognition. Love. Acceptance. Stability. Grand expectations of a single moment in time, but not now—not these imperfect relationships or messy homes, not these tethered sleep schedules or worn-out jeans, not the lost job opportunities and unfulfilled expectations we have now. Always one day, but never today.

Unfortunately, “that” moment we so fervently deposit our efforts into is not coming. It’s not coming when you graduate high school, or start your dream job, or have your first child, or buy a house, or travel the world, or retire alongside the love of your life. It’s not coming the way you hope it will. Life is extremely deep—unnervingly deep—but that life is not tomorrow or any imagined day thereafter. That life is today. It’s right here, lazily smiling beside your messy hair and twitching eyebrow. That moment is a place you can’t chase to find. It’s the sweltering feeling you are experiencing right now as your chest rises towards your chin. It’s the single exhale of carbon dioxide trickling out of your chapped lips. This is the moment.

Although we all come at some point to consider this reality, I think we frequently choose the path of least resistance. Copying and pasting avoidance into the weeks of the month because accepting, grieving, changing, and rebuilding takes a lot more effort. But perhaps, it’s not the confrontation we fear, but the complacency of choosing a life that isn’t the next best thing. Perhaps we like the chase so much because we can’t truly accept that today is the next best thing. Today is all that is ever promised.

Life today can appear murky and mundane, but it is also inexplicably sound. It’s smiling strangers at stop signs. It’s petrichor—the scent that wafts its ways into your nostrils from the summer asphalt after the rain has subsided. It’s loved ones exploding with laughter in the back seat. It’s stopping to breathe in thankfulness after a day’s trip. It’s you, me, and everything we couldn’t have imagined we could be.