Live for the Moment

I need neither future nor past, but to learn to take today not too fast.  ~Jeb Dickerson

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.”

~ Benjamin Franklin 

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you're here and nothing you do will change that. Today you are alive and here and honored and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it's beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”  ~ James Clavell 

Perspective

Have you read Eckharte Tolle's "The Power of Now"?

It is a priceless book

teaching us how to live in the moment we have.

The Present moment.

It is called the present because it is just that. 

A gift. A present.

It's all we really have.

The past is gone. Dwelling wastes the moment that is.

The future is not yet. Don't waste this moment on what is not.

This moment.

This is what we have.

I was looking at a few shots I took earlier in the year and I was thinking about perspective.

I was walking along a path behind some houses and fell in love with an old glass door

resting against a house. A timeless backdrop for new and fleeting flowers.

I couldn't decide what to focus my camera on as they both were beautiful.

This first picture focuses on the door. It is old, from the past, behind the flowers.

It seems to represent the passing of time, history,

what could have been, what is no longer,

what little remains.

Yet it is beautiful.

This next picture focuses on the flowers.

They are young, new, fresh, alive and alert.

They deserve attention as they are the present moment.

They weren't there a bit ago, they won't be there forever.

They are here, Now.

They are also beautiful.

If I consider one step closer, 

I could think of me.

I am the one behind the camera.

I am the action, the future, the decider of what is to come.

I am the future of the picture.

What perspective to take.

What to do with the end result.

That is a beautiful thing.

That got me thinking.

Past, present, future.

How blessed we are as humans that our eyes, our minds

have the ability to see, to focus, to decide.

past, present, future

we can decide what to focus on, when, and how we view that which we see.

I choose NOW.

This moment.

The past is there. I see it. There are troubled times and there are great times.

The past helped form today. Who I am, where I am.

Memories are a part of us but they are not us.

I acknowledge and respect and I move on.

The future is yet to come.

There will be good and there will be bad.

I cannot control it but I can hope for the best,

dream of a beautiful life, look ahead, even plan ahead, 

but not too hard.

I don't want to get lost in what is not.

Above all, I choose now.

I acknowledge past and future.

They are part of life.

But I choose NOW.

This moment.

As far as the pictures?

The door, the flowers, me.

I see them all right now and it is beautiful.