Stop and Smell the Roses

It has been quite some time since I last posted anything to my blog, over a year in fact. I would have undoubtedly continued with this trend of silence had it not been for the recent death of a coworker of mine. Rob died rather suddenly of a heart-attack, and the news came as a shock to all of us who worked with him and came to know him. I had spent 4 years sharing office space with Rob, exchanging pleasantries on campus, cracking jokes in the halls, and the most memorably of all, we spent the last 2 years studying and matriculating through the same M.Ed. program at Framingham StateUniversity. Throughout all of the time I had known him, it was the last thing that Rob ever said to me that had the most impact.

The end of each calendar year also marks the end of a school year at Bucheon University, where I have taught foundation English for the past four years. This year differed from all the others because this year I would not be resigning another contract extension, and I would be walking away from the life that I built, loved, and cherished in the large suburban city of Bucheon. In the process of saying my farewells to friends and acquaintances in December of last year, I chatted with Rob one day, just a few days before I was scheduled to fly out of Korea. I didn't know that would be the last time I saw Rob, but I had a feeling it might be. We wished each other future happiness and success, and before we said goodbye, Rob told me how much he enjoyed reading my blogs and that he thought I was a gifted writer. This came as a surprise to me – for one thing I was shocked that anyone would bother reading my blog (although we were required to read a few blogs as required coursework) and for another, it hadn't occurred to me that anyone would not only read, but enjoy reading them. Of course it felt good to get such a nice compliment, especially from such an avid bookworm like Rob, but it wasn't until the news of his recent death that I really began to reflect further on his last words to me. 

 Life is flighty. Life is fickle. Life is short. Cliché as those statements may appear, true in their essence they remain. None of us know how long we have on this earth and most of us go to great lengths in an attempt to forget the only absolute certainty of our lives; that we will die one day. Every moment spent is another moment we can never relive, redo, or otherwise recapture. Sure we can reminisce through photos and shared memories with friends and family, but even the process of looking back is but a stark reminder of the impossibility of returning to those "simpler" or "better" times. I find it fascinating how the mind always seems to produce a revisionists history of events. But what is it that stands between us and what we want to do, become, or achieve? I would argue that it is precisely the forgetfulness of the reality of our own existence that facilitates the comfort and false sense of security needed to effectively treat time as a disposable, infinite commodity. How could I have stopped writing blog entries? Did I cease to have things to say? Certainly not. Readership or not, I enjoy writing these blogs and I had at least one reader who enjoyed reading them, and now he’s gone. 

So let’s live in the moments that surround us – let’s not procrastinate and put things off for another time. If you have goals, make sure that each day you are taking steps towards reaching those goals – even if the steps seem too small to notice. I assure you there is no such thing as an insignificant stride, the movement toward any goal is like the billions of other unperceivable realities that surround us constantly, like our imperceptions of infrared light, or the trillions of atoms that comprise the universe of space under a single finger nail; we may not see them, but they are there. If our lives are a compilation of continuous movement, a series of instants, then try to bring meaning into the simplest of moments – break things down into micro-moments where thought and consciousness collide to bring about more awareness – to create an acute awareness of the here and the now. Just as no two snowflakes are identical, no two moments are alike. To smell a rose once is not the same as to know the smell of all roses, for no two roses are the same. So the next time you find yourself wanting to rush through an experience, don’t. Take a moment to stop and admire the mundane or marvel at the extraordinary – listen to the street performer, watch a child play in the park, and have a chat with the mailman when you see him – I promise you'll be glad you did.