Don't Carpe Diem.
I decided just now that I’m going to be adding posts to this blog that aren’t only about my very best moments of the day — it’s all related anyway, but I wanted to share this awesome article a friend posted on Facebook, and one that is completely relevant to this journal of recording the “very best moments” of your day.
Yesterday, as I was driving back home to the mountains after being away for four days, I couldn’t stop wallowing in how completely awful my day had been, and I wondered what I would choose as my very best moment. I wandered back in my mind to the past 22 days of this month, thinking about how very up and down every single day has been for me. Besides realizing (err, remembering) how completely emotionally unstable I become after being around family so intensely and continuously, I remembered a moment just the night before — talking so closely with a brother that was in my Hajj group, and how genuinely interested he and a few other brothers were with what I had done in Turkey, and the sweetest memory of how they all come up to me and exclaimed “We didn’t know that we had an Artist in our Hajj group! (as if it was some big accomplishment) … It made me feel really good though, I could feel every part of me smile, even my liver, and yet, how quickly I had forgotten the joy of a moment that had just happened less than 24 hours ago, and how quickly I replaced it with the stress of the past few hours …
After a while, I stopped wallowing and let my mind sit in the moment from last night. I slowly felt my disposition change, and I started feeling optimistic again. Imam Muneer Fareed had said in his talk at ALIM last weekend that “Buoyancy is the need of the day — Keep your soul buoyant.” Such great advice, such a great statement — one more time :: Keep your soul buoyant.
I am someone that goes to pains to make the most of each one of my moments — the sad ones, the happy ones — thinking and over thinking and analyzing to ensure that I’m being grateful, and looking for ways to accept, and improve. The thing that I love about Glennon’s article (besides her great sense of humor), is the insight of kairos over chronos, and the power of a moment of kairos over anything.
Similar to the exercise of this journal, the article encourages championing the true moments of gratitude and insight over the many other moments of stress, disillusion, and dissatisfaction. If your life consists of more of the latter (as mine has lately), let’s remind ourselves to keep buoyant by the remembrance of the little moments of greatness over everything else, ay? …
