Micro-Moments of Delight
While out for a stroll at the park, my daughter Natalie looked up at her mother and me and said, “I’m happy.” Those simple words transformed a casual family outing into a micro-moment of pure joy, during which all was perfect in the world. I wondered where she learned the phrase because, unfortunately, those words aren’t uttered enough, even when we are happy.
I could’ve easily missed the weight of that moment and let it pass as one of many new phrases she’s strung together in the last several months. But it was truly beautiful. I’ve tried to burn that moment into my memory, perhaps replacing one of the less important tidbits occupying real estate in my mind. I tried to memorize the softness of her voice, her speech’s cadence, and the redness of her cheeks when I looked down at her smile. This is living.
Life is fleeting. Natalie won’t always tell me when she’s happy or when she’s sad, despite my best efforts. At some point, as she masters language, those heartfelt moments of preciousness will become less frequent. Like the rest of us, communication will become less about saying how she feels and more closely resemble a code that even Alan Turning (who cracked the Nazi enigma code) couldn’t decipher. These micro-moments must be savored because we don’t know when life as a whole ceases nor when this mini-life within the life will give way to another.
New parents are constantly warned, “you’ll blink an eye, and she’ll be an adult.” It seems far-fetched at first, but it doesn't take long to agree wholeheartedly, and that realization brings about more revelations related to our own mortality. I immensely admire the Stoic philosophers, who blended ancient wisdom with pragmatism over two thousand years ago to create a brand of philosophy that confronts the finality of death head-on.
Marcus Aurelius wrote, “it is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live.” While profound, this warning begs the question, what is living?
It’s graduation season, and high school and college graduates everywhere are nervously contemplating their futures. Some will join the workforce right away. They’ll soon drive to their new employer for the first time, fill out insurance paperwork, and learn a new trade. They’re told that this is living.
Other grads will continue their education, many leaving the comfort of home for the first time. They might be nervous about making new friends, choosing a major, and getting to class on time. It’s all a part of living.
And other graduates still may be joining the military or engaging in mission work. But they’re all feeling a similar uneasiness about the future, hopefully, coupled with an excitement about what lies ahead.
These moments feel colossal. From childhood, we’re taught to look ahead to the next stage, to plan. In athletics, we anxiously prepare for the promotion from JV to Varsity. In school, our stomachs are in knots when it’s time to transition from middle school to high school. And to totally scare the shit out of kids, we’re threatened with a “permanent record.” It feels like everything is on the line.
Perhaps we make too much of these prescribed transitions and focus too little on the micro-moments that make life magical. We’re apt to under-enjoy simple moments of joy by constantly looking ahead or backward while our minds chatter away in reflection or anticipation. When reminiscing on my past, it’s not the milestone moments that I recall fondly; it’s the small moments of uninhibited, genuine enjoyment.
I don’t care much about the passing test score I received, but I remember the laughs at my expense as I struggled through geometry while the whole of my friend group pitched in to save me from failure. And I can hardly remember the moments leading up to my college graduation. Still, I’ll never forget those goofy moments with my friends (some of which must remain unspoken until the statute of limitations expires).
As we get older, our curiosity fades. Living in the moment is replaced by constantly judging the past and worrying about the future. I’m trying to learn from my daughter. She isn’t suffering in the imagination as Seneca warned against; she’s living in the present.
It’s easier to see death as something far in the future, but death isn’t an event; it's a process. We’re dying every day. Every second wasted, not living, is a second closer to death — that time belongs to death. Seeing death with me now helps me live and acknowledge the micro-moments that can easily be mistaken for the minutia. Once you start to see them, you see them more and more and revise the definition of living from irregular milestones to everyday moments of delight.
