and just like that, I'm addicted to chapstick...

This afternoon, I reached into my bag to find my chapstick, and oh no! I couldn't find it! The most surprising part of this moment was the panic that set into my heart. How would I survive the rest of the day without it? And then I stopped as I realized: I am addicted to chapstick. When did this happen? I distinctly remember what seems like just yesterday when I didn't even own chapstick. It just happened, one moment, one use at a time. [This post isn't about addiction. Though that is about how those things happen...so it could go that direction easily, I guess.]

Just like the three feet of snow that seems to have melted in a moment. It just took one degree of warmer weather, one day at a time. It is those small things that happen when we aren't watching that add up to our future. I have been reading this book called A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. This was an Oprah book club selection and I got it awhile ago. The book is not really what I would call normal. In fact, sometimes he is a bit out there, and I have to read it with an open mind and imagination to see how what he is saying might resonate with truth I know. Surprisingly, I feel that it does, for the most part. His purpose is to discuss overcoming our ego.

Anyway, the part I am loving right now is his idea of living in the present. Not a groundbreaking idea, I know. But for me it kind of is. For someone who studies and looks to the past, sometimes I get caught there. And often I am too worried about the future to be in the Now, as he calls it. But the only time that exists is now. It is what we do with this moment that makes our past okay and the future better. We only have this precise moment to work with. The past doesn't exist anymore as a moment we can do anything about. The future doesn't exist yet. It is just this moment that we have to work with.

Okay...I am going to be late for class. Yikes!