Every pa ing minute.
When I first heard this line, in the movie Vanilla Sky, it struck a powerful chord in me. Sure, its a sentiment Id heard countle times before, that at any given moment you could set changes in motion that would alter the course of your life. But something about the phrasing. Every pa ing minute. Its immediate, its powerful, its crucial and present. Its right this minute.
It doe t break your destiny into flows of days or months. Its not, This month you could change everything. What is a month anyway, an amalgam of moments and days, good moods and bad, energy and lethargy? A month is impo ible to get your arms around, impo ible to master and control. Even a day has that vast quality, with its moments of sadne and hope and the many mundane things that we artificially lump into a whole.
But a minute. This minute. This pa ing minute. Right now.
Its the only thing we control and the one thing we overlook so completely and co istently. We end our days thinking and dreaming of the future, or dreading whats to come, and regretting and remembering days gone by. And in the proce we forget this precious minute, this lovely second, the one in which you move and breathe. Right now.
Right now, you could get up from where you are and you could leave everything behind. You could buy a one-way plane ticket and go somewhere new. Right now you could call that person you havent talked to in years. Right now you could propose that crazy idea to your bo or to that company you want to work for, or to that person youve imagined could finance your dream. Right now you could seek out a homele person and have a conversation over a meal. Right now.
Of course you probably wont do any of those things. Youll probably keep doing whatever you were doing a minute ago, and what youll be doing next minute. The only thing thats certain about this minute is that its pa ing. Its pa ing you by and will never be back.
Accepting and understanding that truth fully gives you a fluidity, a momentum, like understanding that one day the body you now cherish and inhabit will no longer have motion and breath or the pulse of life. At first blush this may seem counterintuitive, that knowing youll die and that this minute will never come should paralyze and frighten you. But, contemplated fully, it will actually give you energy and drive like nothing else. Because measured agai t that stark and immovable truth, all the things that hold you back are puny and inco equential. A disa roving mate or family. Financial circumstances. Even all the collected and disjointed moments which you regard as your past actually pale and tremble at this truth. One day all this will be nothing.
And still you have this pa ing minute.
It is your only hook, the thing you can grab onto to seek out joy and fulfillment and fame and stardom. This pa ing minute.
Every pa ing minute is a chance to turn it all around. Just what can you grab and turn around in this one tiny minute anyway? Po e ed with the image of sto ing an oncoming truck, gra ing it by a corner and physically turning it around, you may imagine the punine of this minute compared with the screeching 18-wheeler that is where youve been and where youre going. How can you grab hold of that in this one tiny, fragile pa ing minute?
But the truth is that this pa ing minute is all we have. If your life has been a eeding 18-wheeler bent on destruction, only right now can you do anything about it.
But how? First, by deciding, and thats a powerful action you can take at this very moment. You can decide. Decide youll be rich, or that youll leave this miserable job, or this mate that makes you feel unha y and alone. Dont worry about how that will ha en, because it wont ha en in this pa ing minute, but in a collection of minutes, as the result of actio taken in sequence. But the decision comes right now. Quickly! The minute is pa ing.
Then in this minute, the one that follows the minute in which you made your decision, you will outline what you need to do. Perha you can complete your whole dream right in this minute. Perha you can walk into your bo office and resign right now. But chances are youll need to plan, make another series of decisio .
And of those pla , at least ONE of them are something you can do right now. Buy the paper to look for a new job. Make a phone call to that long-lost friend.
One thing. Now. Action vs. contemplation. The crux of the matter, the difference between people who co ider themselves ha y and contented vs. those who are thwarted and resentful is that the ha y ones acted, simply acted, while the thwarted ones contemplated. It doe t even matter is the action is right, or causes the intended result, just that it ends the inertia and fuzzine of inaction.
Every pa ing minute is a chance to turn it all around. Where will you take this minute? What decision will you make? What action will you take that will lead you down the path you desire? One thing. Right now. Go do it.
About The Author
Maria E. Andreu is a coach who hel people get brave and live big. Her interactive blog, Living Undaunted, is a place where you can get links to some of the coolest sites on the net for getting stuff done (big dreams and mundane every day gotta get it done stuff), get acce to free resources and more. Find it at http://mariaeandreu.typepad.com/livingundaunted/.
maria@coachville.com
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