148,920 Moments

Today was an ordinary day.

That's how I would characterize it. Not an especially memorable 16-hour stretch. Nothing wonderful happened, nothing awful happened. Just a laundry list of everyday normal activities. A momentary work crisis that got resolved. A potential new project that may or may not come through. A pedicure.

It strikes me, as I sit here at my dining room table, that the overwhelming percentage of the time spent on earth comprises ordinary days.

Let's say, for example, that I live to be 85 years old and that I die with my faculties intact. And let's say further that each day is approximately 16 hours long. I'm now 51. That means 34 more years x 16 hours = 198,560 hours of ordinary day-ness.

But let's go one step further and say, wait, some of those hours will be extraordinary: moments of extreme joy, moments of anguish, et cetera. So, let's make it easy and say, Right, 198,560 hours x 75% of the time = 148,920 hours of ordinary day-ness.

What an amazing thought.

That's a helluva lot of time, I'm thinking. And that's time that is spent doing every day, not especially memorable things. The kind of stuff I'm unlikely to look back on at the very end of my life and say, Wow, yes, I did that.

But what if I could learn to do that? What if I could learn to look at each day -- and each activity within the day -- as something special just for the sake of existing?

What I mean is this: What if I turn this whole thing around and say, Wow, my life comprises hundreds of thousands of hours of all kinds of moments and it is therefore complex and interesting and full?

What if I can get to that?

Better question: How can I get to that? How can I enjoy moments as they unfold and keep the unpleasant times in perspective, realizing they're temporary or they're normal or they're just a new reality that has to be dealt with?

I don't have the answer. What I have is the question. That seems like such a great place to start.

I'm committing to something tonight. At random points throughout the day, I'm going to stop and notice what I'm really doing. I'm going to acknowledge what that moment is about. It might be crappy (I'm paying a parking ticket); it might be fun (I'm singing along to "Company" while driving and I'm hitting all of Elaine Stritch's notes). No judgments. Just an acknowledgment.

An awareness. Being alive to some of those 148,920 moments I might very well have ahead of me.

So here's a start. I'm writing a blog. I'm writing. I love writing. I am making time in my life right now to write. I'm telling my truth. This is one of my moments.