What is in this moment?
I recently boarded a train that would travel overnight, and was happy that my daughter and I would have a five-seater space all to ourselves because the train was not full. But my happiness was short-lived.
Lo and behold, a haphazard looking man rushes by with a laptop and a charger dangling in his hands, and connects his laptop to the power socket by our seats. He greets us and asks if anyone was coming to occupy the empty seats. What a misfortune, I thought – but was it?
I wanted to lie that the seats were occupied but my faith called me out – ‘don’t be a witch!’ So, I did the right thing. Few minutes later he was well-settled in our seat and the vision of me and my daughter sprawled comfortably on a five-seater space swiftly escaped through the windows like smoke.
But what was in that seemingly misfortunate moment? – my life’s longest, deepest, and most meaningful conversation with a stranger! We talked about many things – from politics to academia to spirituality. That night’s train journey cemented in me the importance of exploring, in every moment, fortunate or misfortunate, ‘what’s in this moment?’ But what does that mean?
Carpe diem, missed opportunities
We are often encouraged to carpe diem, or seize the moment. And when we do not seize the moment, we miss opportunities. But practicing carpe-diem may seem as though we often see an opportunity, immediately discern what it means, and pounce to grab it. But in most cases, opportunities come shapeless, formless, and meaningless. They are right by our footsteps, but silent and unlabelled. It is up to us to make out of them what we might. Capturing the moment simply means that even though something may at face value hold no meaning or seem as nuisance, we must open our minds to exploring what may be there to gain.
That moment in the train made me realise that perhaps we go through life everyday walking on treasures that are waiting to be picked by us. And these treasures are often delivered through the people we interact with. Maybe indeed, we are not really strangers!
Things happening ‘To’ versus ‘For’ us
A friend of mine once said something I found interesting – things don’t happen ‘to’ us, they happen ‘for’ us. This is such an empowering way of thinking because in any case, good and bad things will happen. Whether we think they happen ‘to’, or ‘for’ us is what will determine our ability to thrive through them.
If we think that things happen ‘to’ us, we are in principle adopting a victimhood mindset. We see what happens as nothing but an imposition … a hindrance. On the other hand, what happens ‘for’ us is an opportunity to be explored – what’s in this moment? Like the unexpected seat-mate who ruined my seemingly beautiful, but narrow-minded dream of a good journey, what is there in your present moment? Your moment could be a horrible traffic jam, it could be the moment you took the wrong turn on the road, it could be your car breaking down …
‘Why is this happening to me?’ versus ‘how is this happening for me’? are two different pathways. The first leads us to victimhood, martyrdom, or feeling that there’s something wrong with us. But the second one is a path of empowerment; it is a path towards deeper growth, awareness, appreciation, and responsibility. Put very simply, if we see things as happening ‘for’, rather than ‘to’ us, we are liberated from blame and the agony of complaining when things don’t go the way we expect. We are tasking our subconscious mind to search outside the conventional box.
That way, we are able to navigate especially challenging situations without breaking ourselves and inevitably others into pieces. It also empowers us to think that things happen to shape us into being or achieving what we are meant to.
In summary, seizing every moment means exploring how something may be happening ‘for’ us. It doesn’t mean we have to like what’s happening. It is about intentionally deciding to search for the “treasure”, to see the situations and circumstances in our lives as the opportunities for growth that they truly are.
Ms Kimaro writes about careers, leadership, personal development and issues affecting youth and women
