Lessons from a child can bring us into the moment

Oprah Winfrey is annoying me. I don’t often see her show, but I have thumbed through her magazine. It seems every other issue contains articles admonishing me to “live in the moment.” Buddhists call it mindfulness.

The idea is pretty simple. We are supposed to focus on just this moment, right here, right now. It’s a nice concept, but I struggle with it. Like many folks I work in a deadline-driven industry.

Yet, a quote from H.G. Wells has been floating through my thoughts. He said, “We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.”

Spending time with a child is a great way to see this in action. I vividly remember a spring day when my son, Sam, was 5. He’d been given a red balloon at a birthday party. He clutched it in his hand as we hurried into the grocery store. My mind was full of tasks and errands.

Sam’s mind was on the red balloon. “I wanna let my balloon go,” he said.

Every parent knows children and balloons are a no-win situation.

“I wanna let my balloon go.” Sam insisted, tugging at my hand.

I looked into his eyes. “Sam, if you let this balloon go you will never see it again, and I’m not buying you another one.”

“That’s OK. I won’t cry or anything. I’m 5 now.”

Sighing, I stood with Sam on the sidewalk and watched the red balloon sail into a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. “OK, let’s go.”

“No! Wait! I wanna watch it,” Sam cried.

I looked at my grocery list, and thought of all the places I had to be. “Sam, we don’t have time for this.”

“Wait!” he said. “Don’t you want to see it disappear?” There were a lot of things I wanted at that moment, but watching a balloon vanish wasn’t one of them. I started to tug on his hand, but something in the rapt way he stared into the sky, stopped me.

“Are there balloons in heaven, Mom? Do you think an angel will catch my balloon?”

“I don’t know, Sam. What do you think?”

“I think a jet plane might pop it,” he said. By now the balloon was a speck so tiny I could barely see it. “Or maybe a bird is going to catch it and take it home to her baby birds.”

And while we thought about that theory, the balloon vanished into the blue. “Is my balloon dead, now?” Sam asked.

I stared into the empty sky with him and once again asked, “What do you think?”

“I think I really want another balloon,” Sam replied.

In that particular moment I grasped how fluid time is for children. It stretches before them like an endless magic carpet of possibilities, freeing them to watch and to wonder.

A few weeks ago I left the gym, having just read one of Oprah’s magazines while on the treadmill. I pushed open the glass doors and thought, if I was single, childless and had a cook, maid and personal trainer, I could live in the moment, too.

Something wet touched my cheek. While I was inside it had started to snow. Great, I grumbled.

I shrugged on my jacket and looked up. A huge feathery snowflake landed in my eye. The chill blurred my vision for a moment as I stood in the mostly deserted parking lot. Surrounded by the muffled silence of falling snow, I took a deep breath. For once I was in the moment.

I tipped my face up and let the flakes kiss my cheeks and melt into my hair. I looked up so long I got dizzy. “Are you OK,” a gentleman asked as he walked toward his car.

“Yes,” I said and felt a bit sheepish. “I was just watching the snow.”

He stopped and tilted his head. “No two are a like, they say.”

And I thought of Sam and the red balloon. Just like snowflakes, no two moments are alike. Time passes, turning little boys with balloons into sturdy second-graders with deadlines of their own.

I’m not very good at living in the moment, but as winter dissolves into spring, I think I’ll rearrange my schedule to accommodate a little less work and a little more wonder.

And maybe I’ll buy a red balloon, just to let it go.

Oprah would be proud.