A Perfect Moment in Time

I'm sitting here straight across from the open window. The fan is on high so I feel the breeze from the rainy day beyond. It is a good, heavy, soaking late-spring rain. The way my building is positioned I face the end of another building causing an echo effect between the two. The sounds of the raindrops hitting the pavement two floors below is amplified. I have soft, soothing music playing. Every now and then a bird will sing from the tree. The mood is very tranquil and serene. My soul takes a deep breath and as it exhales I can feel all the stress and tension leave my body. At this moment in time I am totally at peace. No thoughts to cloud up the mind. In fact, I am so at peace right now, it's hard to write because I really have to force my mind on the words instead of allowing it to float away on the music drifting out my window into the rain. What a perfect moment in time! Except now my kitty wants attention so slowly the demands of the day will start creeping back in.

That's the way life is, isn't it? We have all these little snippets of time that are strung together like rare pearls around the perfectly shaped neck. Each pearl looks the same, uniform, from a distance but on closer inspection each pearl is a little different than the next. The difference might only be the color that reflects off of one small place, but it's there; the one thing that makes each pearl unique.

People have a way of overlooking the uniqueness of each new day. We get so caught up in our everyday schedules and routines that we miss the one thing that makes today different from yesterday and tomorrow from today. When we look at our week all strung together, the days all look the same. A popular response to the question "How was your day?" is, "You know, same old stuff, different day." We miss it. Every day isn't going to be some great, exciting, remember-it-for-life kind of day. Those kinds of days are special treats we get every now and then. But there is something special and unique about every single day of our lives. We have to watch for it. It may be nothing more than a smile from a new neighbor or stranger on the street. It might be a parking space that opened up right in front just as you turned the corner. Or it might be the way the breeze through the window and the music on that breeze and the rain beyond it all meld together to give you a moment of perfect peace in the middle of your day.

I have so much waiting for me on my desk, in the sink and in the laundry basket, just like every other day. But for right now in this moment of this day, I have the kind of perfect peace that can't be duplicated. It will never be the same again. It is mine just for today, the one small niche that makes this rare pearl unique. My soul takes another deep breath and it floats away with the music on the breeze to the rain beyond. A perfect moment in time.