“Live In the Present Moment”

     Presenter: Dick Stetler – July 2021

 

    If we live long enough, we begin sensing the changes that we associate with the process of aging.  People use humor to disguise their concerns over memory loss.  They say with a smile, “I have a terminal case of CRS (Can’t Remember Stuff).”  Or, they begin wondering if what is advertised on television can really keep their neurons firing on all cylinders.   

    I visited a woman who was living in a senior center.  When I entered her room, she asked, “Should I know you?” I said “No, we have never met.  Your daughter and her husband are going on a vacation and they asked me to visit you while they are gone.”

    After sharing some pleasantries with each other, I asked, “How many children did you have?”  She thought for a moment and said with a smile on her face:

You know, I can’t remember how many I had.  I am forgetting so many things these days.  But you are here to visit me.  Tomorrow I will forget that you were here but this is today.  May I share with you a number of doilies that I have made?

    Once again, I met a woman who knew how to surrender peacefully and gracefully the things of her past.  We laughed and had a wonderful time together.  I was learning from her what is important and what may fade with the passing of time.  She was sweet, kind, and eager to share stories about each of her hand-crafted doilies.  Most regrets and successes in her past were gone from the present.  Yet, she had perfect memory of a story connected with each of her doilies.

    When I was younger, I recall hearing from others, “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”  As I grew older, I have recognized how misleading that statement is. What is a dress rehearsal, but a time when the players work out the kinks in the storyline and learn increased confidence in playing their parts. 

    Life is a growth process, filled with mistakes, spoken words that were said in haste that can never be erased, tragedies and successes that encourage people to engage in rehearsing to whoever is willing to listen to the highlights and experiences of their past.

    Just how important is remembering?  Can we recall the names of all our teachers in grade school?  We grew from having them teach us how to write, read, and learn our times tables.  Good memory can be an element of pride for a good number of seniors, but each of us can create a better life by building on what we have learned from all those past experiences even after we forget their source.

     There was a time when Thomas Edison experienced a tragedy that might have stopped any normal person from moving forward. This remarkable inventor created the first incandescent light bulb and the phonograph.   He held over one thousand patents for his various ice-breaking inventions.  

    One night, weeks before Christmas in 1914, Edison Industries burned to the ground.  Edison lost two million dollars along with all his life's work.  He had insured his company for $238,000 because his buildings had been constructed out of concrete.  The possibility of a total loss due to a fire was inconceivable.  Nevertheless, Edison Industries was a total loss.

    The next morning one of Edison's sons went searching for his father.  Charles felt very badly for his dad who was 67 years old.  He found him picking up a hand-full of ashes from the debris. Edison surprised his son with these words, “There is great value in a disaster like this.  All of our mistakes are burned up.  Thank God, we can start anew.”

     One of the greatest lessons we can learn is to realize that no experience has any value whatsoever until we assign one.  As long as Edison was making a judgment about what happened, he decided to make one that gave him insight that would encourage him to move beyond his losses.  

    Edison possessed an understanding of life that enabled him to thrive in spite of his present circumstances. Nothing he could do would have reversed what happened, but he could build on it.  Feeling badly, becoming depressed, or remaining angry were not among Edison’s spiritual responses. 

     Edison had not lost the understanding that life continues to be one adventure after another.  The terminal fire was part of his dress rehearsal.  Thomas Edison had another 17 years to continue dreaming of what possibilities could spring from his dreams.

    Nothing in our past can attack us unless we have brought an unresolved painful episode into the present moment.  What has happened is done and over with unless we continue to feed it and thus, keep it alive to partially taint the present.  Sometimes for some people a memory is so painful that it freezes them from moving forward.  No one is strong enough to keep us from moving forward unless we choose not to build on it.

    In the beginning of my career, I met a remarkable woman who was the coordinator of The Rape Crisis Center at our neighborhood hospital. One day I asked her how and why she made the decision to work with women who have had this experience.  She was very direct with her answer.  She said:

     I was raped as a teenager by a much older man and I felt I had been scarred for life. Somehow it came to me that not only did this man abuse my body but he also moved into my mind and stayed there.  I made up my mind that he would not remain as part of me.  I let go of that experience by moving on by forgiving and pitying the man who did this to me.  When I saw an opening for my current position at the hospital, I went for an interview. I wanted to teach women how to forgive and to move on. 

 

     That is too expensive to allow it to define the present.  There is no question that such a moment will be remembered, but the bee no longer has the ability to sting again and again. I feel empowered to teach women the importance of emerging still in control of their continued growth and happiness.

    She was determined to allow this memory to fade and yet still build on it and become a teacher who has overcome what is so shattering to women who know the continuing sting of that bee.  Women are still healthy and beautiful after an event like rape and they have nightmares, but like Edison, they have the ability to move on developing their spirits that were never touched by any man.  Women like men always have the ability to use their spiritual energy for creative, healing thoughts and emotions.  People need to be reminded to use them.

    We build our lives on forgotten memories.  We influence countless people who we never knew were watching us. Our lives can be a presence where others find acceptance and be nourished by our spirits.  People have the ability to bypass the need to stand in their own shadows by purifying their thought forms.  Forgive, forgive, and forgive again.  Let the light within your spirit shine through your smiles and eyes.  Communicate what is often a challenge to find the right words to express.  A warm, healthy spirit can communicate volumes by never uttering a word.  We have to remember that the past is gone and the future is yet to be. The only moments that we really have are those that we have in the present.