Living the moment

On being a human being, not just a human doing!

Four big stressors in life?  Death, divorce, illness and moving.

A moving experience

Year was 1978. A ‘moving’ time. Maria and our four kids (aged 10 to 15) had moved from Johannesburg to Wimbledon with my appointment as GM of a JWT ad agency offshoot just off Berkeley Square in London. Good career move for me and a great escape from apartheid - and all the guilt and aversion we felt from being in it and benefitting from it.

But with such a big move come the usual withdrawal symptoms - parting with friends and family, leaving a 1 acre luxury home in sunny South Africa, good schools, settling in pains adapting to a damp and crowded country, a cramped semi, new schools, finding friends, learning ways to live on less. Grappling with a doubling of the mortgage rate in the 2 years we were there which stretched our shrunken rands to a point of expense exceeding income!  

Maria and kids were feeling the strain. Summed up by our 11 year old daughter, Kim, who sadly uttered each morning: “Oh no, not another grey day!”.  And our eldest, Claire (15), who greeted my homecoming each evening with this tearful appeal: “Why did you bring us here?!”. To cap it all, when our 14 year old son came home with stain marks on his Wimbledon College blazer. “What are those marks?”, Maria enquired. New boy from South Africa, Craig, responded in anger: “They spat at me today!”.  Which left our youngest Lisa (10) as the only reasonably happy camper. With a not so happy mother, Maria, who has one riveting memory of our time in England: “I spent our two years there with my face 2 feet from the washing machine and dryer!”  

And yours truly arriving in a new country (where my market ‘memory’ bank and contact network were reduced to zip). Confronting a senior role not nearly as rosy as the one painted when they were wooing me.  All in all, a move that was a tough challenge to adapting, to endurance and to acceptance.   

An awakening

Unbeknown to me, a life changing experience was about to unfold. There, in the leafy gardens behind the agency where I worked, nestled the historic Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception. Passing by one grey day in the gloomy winter of our discontent, I ambled into that utterly beautiful and spiritual place. It was there, on impulse, that I went to confession. Can’t remember the sins I shed that day (God forgets them too, we are told!). What I will never forget is the price for my misdemeanours meted out by a Jesuit priest I had never met, nor seen since. “For your penance, go and read the book, “Abandonment to Divine Providence” written by Jean Pierre de Caussade” he pronounced, solemnly yet ever so gently. Some penance, I thought, given the uninviting title of a work written as an instruction for the good Nuns of the Visitation in the ancient French city of Nancy way back in the 1720s!

Undeterred, off I traipsed so obediently to the St Paul bookshop in Morpeth Terrace, Westminster, the only store that stocked this unknown little book. What an awakening! How one’s attitude to and practice of life can be transformed for ever! There and then I took on board this injunction – to be and live in the present, the moment in time when time eternity evaporates, setting you be free to be, free to experience, free to give, free to receive – no matter what,

This is the thrust and essence of Father Jean Pierre’s learned, somewhat dense instruction. whatever you do, say, experience, give, receive – learn to live the present moment. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, not even today, but in every living moment. Because that’s all we have at any given moment in time! To be alive to, and be in the present moment.

On being

Saying it is easy. Being in the present moment is not! Putting this life giving ‘habit’ into practice daily ain’t so easy! The rewards far outweigh the effort required. It’s like when you first get on a bike. Exciting, inviting, yet with gradual degrees of difficulty. Very wobbly to start with, sometimes fearfully falling off with pain from scraping or scratching the body. Followed by progressive moments of triumph, by joy and enjoyment. When you actually get to riding the bike with balance, flair without falling, without even thinking any more. Once mastered, you can then start doing the tricky manoeuvres, getting better and better at it.

Same downs and ups go with practising and pursuing the perfection if living in the moment. I found it very difficult and challenging to begin with. Often straying from the present to other diverting places in my heart or head – reverting to some past problem, future fear, negative mind chatter and clutter. All wayward distractions that obliterate our being in the present - for all its worth in experience and for all its value from enjoying the only reality, now, in every moment of our being. 

Interesting to see how fashionable this notion has become some 3 centuries later. A now concept made famous and fashionable by Eckhart Tolle in his book, The Power of Now.  Also interesting to note that De Caussade’s 18^th century work has been reprinted many times under the now more pointed title, The Sacrament of the Present Moment.  Here’s a quote from this great visionary:

The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. The will of God is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love. Jean-Pierre De Caussade in The Sacrament of the Present Moment    

All expressed in this uplifting, but challenging call to each of us from the One who cares: Let go, let God! As we did with some trepidation. Accepting an inviting offer from the company, we moved back to South Africa and our beautiful Cape Town in 1980. More aware, more practised and more accepting of the freedom from living the present in faith and love.

This account of the dynamic possibilities and payback you gain from living the moment comes with every wish and prayer that each one of our precious family and friends (and yours) finds, and lives, the joy of being a human being, as well as a human doing!

Be well, be free, be faithful, be …and live each moment!