Drives Fast to Smell the Roses?

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Tagline.”

“Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold”

Sometimes we forget to stop and enjoy the moment because we are always looking to capture the next one.  I remember this scene in a Star Trek movie where one of the characters was a long lived individual who showed our intrepid Captain Picard how to slow down time.  See the pollen coming off of the flowers, the individual beams of color being projected by the sun, even the single fluttering of a hummingbird.  We are always looking for the next best thing, forgetting that maybe it is sitting right in front of us.

Here’s something to consider, the same math behind dating websites is used to place kids in schools in large metropolitan areas.  So you can either find a mate while you date or enroll in a magnet school before it’s too late!  It’s called Deferred Acceptance and it means you most likely pass up on the first item simply because it was the first item.  You may even compare your final choice later to that first one, but you won’t go back unless things really don’t work out.  Think that is weird, that notion ended with two people being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics!

I had considered my tagline as being “Contents Under Pressure”, but that seems like a cop-out.  We’re all under pressure from something.  You have a mortgage, maybe a child is chronically ill, maybe your mother-in-law continues calling to ask why her computer keeps making duplicates of photos she downloads from her camera.  [okay the ex’s mom used to copy thing into multiple folders and didn’t realize they became copies.  But then she also has her Mac saving every image and audio file from any site she visited!]  When it’s work, I thrive under the pressure.  If it is someone else’s issue, I can usually offer some advice or ask someone who might be better versed at a subject.  My life, well I’m still trying to figure that one out.

Over this past weekend I saw a small child pick a flower from a public garden.  An innocent act by a 3 year old that would have gotten an adult arrested for destruction of public property.  She just kept calling it a pretty flower as she placed it in her jacket pocket.  Meanwhile her mother was looking in all directions for her police escort to take her away.  The child saw one thing, the parent something completely different.  But what if she had just held the flower for a second and recalled her own childhood?

So stopping to smell the roses, finding that moment of perfection in a collection of moments is easy.  You just have to be willing to acknowledge it.  I remember a time when I was driving back from New Hampshire to Maryland in the pouring rain.  It’s been a long weekend spent with family, both hers and mine.  Whitney was exhausted, she slept most of the drive.  Silence filled the car, except for the rain pounding down on my car.  I couldn’t hold her hand while I was driving, but had moved the mirror just enough to be able to check on her at any moment.  We had talked the entire drive up, even stopping so I could buy cough drops for my sore throat.  It was great, but those stolen glances, even better.  I dreamed a lifetime in those precious seconds.

I’ve been cursed with a better than average recall of events.  An eidetic memory that allows me a catalog of my life, things I’ve read, experiences.  Remembering not just how something smelled, but I can describe it in full detail.  So for every time I go back into my mind and think about what Laura Glickman was wearing the first time I kissed her in 7th grade, I can also hear Whitney’s mother telling me I was to blame for everything that went wrong.  I can see the reflections on the windows, how the wind felt as I stood there just listening, the sound of birds in the background.  [words hurt more than had she just thrown something at me.  I promise I don’t remember the fight I had with some kid in junior high anywhere near as clearly.]

I love the idea of stopping time for the good things, but it also has to have a balance point.  An equilibrium that shows both sides of the coin simultaneously.

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