It is a Friday night and I am driving home. It is not early and it is not late. Although it is not a long drive I am enjoying the night, jazz on the radio. What I see is people in a terrific rush, passing me at high speeds – well above the speed limit.
Am I just enjoying the drive or am I getting old? We identify slow drivers as old or drunk. I am not driving particularly slowly, just not racing. It is a beautiful night, a night to be enjoyed. A night to roll the windows down and feel the wind on your face. I have always done this, since the time I started driving. Now it makes me feel young and beautiful.
All these people in a terrible rush. Are they getting home from work? Are they headed for a party, a date? What catastrophe will befall them if they don’t hurry? The older I get the less I understand that rush – unless I am late for an appointment of course. There are moments to be savored in this life and driving on a beautiful new moon night is one of them for me.
Stop and smell the roses, isn’t that what we have heard? So this is my version. Watching all those people missing the moment; perhaps they are headed for their own special moments and can’t wait to get there. Maybe what they don’t understand is that the moment, the experience, will still be there when they are – it will still be a moment. But the journey is it’s own special moment. Every moment is the now. If you are rushing toward another moment, you will always miss the one you are in.
So for me, it was a beautiful new moon Friday night, the windows down, the wind in my face, soft jazz playing and the now is always a wonderful thing.