Living “in the moment”

As we come back from spring break, we head into the last part of the school year and look forward to exciting times ahead.  The life of a school is always busy but it seems to speed up as we move closer to the end of the school year. 

However, for one group of our students, life might seem to be standing still, somewhat frozen on the brink of an unknown and unreal world—called the future.  Our Seniors--finishing High School and moving into the next phase of their lives, having to focus on exams while still trying to figure out what they will do AFTER exams—for the rest of their lives.

Universities loom as exciting and scary things—but first you have to get in (grades, essays, exam scores, entrance tests, and on and on).   And no matter how good your grades, how well you do on exams, how brilliant your essays are, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of others also with good grades, exams, essays vying for the same university spot.  This is likely one of the first times when a person comes up on the truth of the statement that “not everything is in your control.” 

Students tend to think that they are going through these anxieties alone—that no one feels or has ever felt as nervous, as anxious, and as stressed as they are feeling right now.  What they usually do not realize is that their parents are also going through stress—but of a very different type.  The child that they loved, nurtured, kissed good night is going out of their lives forever.  Not, let me be quick to say, the person but the child, now an adult.  Childhood is rapidly becoming just a memory.

While it is only natural to look forward to and sometimes fear the future, let us not forget to be “mindful” of the present.  Every day brings pleasure if we will only take a moment to look for it—the majesty of a thunderstorm, the beauty of a rainbow, the laughter of a child, the gentle words or touch of a friend—how often do we miss these because we insist on focusing on other things.  Yes, it is important to plan and to strive for a good future, but it is also important to appreciate today—to be mindful of the present moment.

One of my favorite articles on this is by Bill Bryson, author of many books including one I’m a Stranger Here Myself (the title in the USA) or Notes from a Big Country (the title in the UK).  

In this book is an essay about his own experiences of seeing his eldest son go off to college.  It is well worth reading—whatever the age of your child. 

Excerpt from “ON LOSING A SON (TO COLLEGE)”

For the full essay, click here:  http://palmersworld.blogspot.pt/2006/05/on-losing-son.html)

This may get a little sentimental, and I'm sorry, but yesterday evening I was working at my desk when my youngest child came up to me, a baseball bat perched on his shoulder and a cap on his head, and asked me if I felt like playing a little ball with him. I was trying to get some important work done before going away on a long trip, and I very nearly declined with regrets, but then it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month, and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.

So we went out onto the front lawn and here is where it gets sentimental. There was a kind of beauty about the experience so elemental and wonderful I cannot tell you--the way the evening sun fell across the lawn, the earnest eagerness of his young stance, the fact that we were doing this most quintessentially dad-and-son thing, the supreme contentment of just being together--and I couldn't believe that it would ever have occurred to me that finishing an article or writing a book or doing anything at all could be more important and rewarding than this.

Now what has brought on all this sudden sensitivity is that a week or so ago we took our eldest son off to a small university in Ohio.

"Once they leave for college they never really come back," a neighbor who has lost two of her own in this way told us wistfully the other day.

This isn't what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that they come back a lot, only this time they hang up their clothes, admire you for your intelligence and wit, and no longer have a hankering to sink diamond studs into various odd holes in their heads. But the neighbor was right. He is gone. There is an emptiness in the house that proves it.

I hadn't expected it to be like this because for the past couple of years even when he was here he wasn't really here, if you see what I mean. Like most teenagers, he didn't live in our house in any meaningful sense--more just dropped by a couple of times a day to see what was in the refrigerator or to wander between rooms. . . but mostly he resided in a place called "Out."

My role in getting him off to college was simply to write checks--lots and lots of them--and to look suitably pale and aghast as the sums mounted. I was staggered at the cost of sending a child to college these days.

So you will excuse me, I hope, when I tell you that the emotional side of this event was rather overshadowed by the ongoing financial shock. It wasn't until we dropped him at his university dormitory and left him there looking touchingly lost and bewildered . . .that it really hit home that he was vanishing out of our lives and into his own.

The hard and unexpected part is the realization not just that my son is not here but that the boy he was is gone forever. I would give anything to have them both back. But of course that cannot be. Life moves on. Kids grow up and move away, and if you don't know this already, believe me, it happens faster than you can imagine.