This Moment Is All We Ever Have

A few weeks ago, I went to the mountains with some friends, and one thing we did was to go around some truly beautiful forests by bicycle. 
I was with my son, and they were with their son, both of them 12 years old. The kids were really enjoying the ride, the ups and downs of the hills and the speed they could reach with the bikes.
They were not so interested in seeing nature, but they were lost in the enjoyment of speed and movement. 
My friends and my wife were kind of running after the kids, trying to not to lose them when suddenly, as if coming out from a hypnotic state, in a moment when the kids somehow slowed down, one of my friends said: 
‘Wow! If we hurry, we don’t see the beauty.’
I was really happy to hear him saying that. 

The thing is that if we hurry, we don’t only miss the beauty, we truly don’t see anything!
For most of us, as the days pass, we think we do so much, being so busy, accomplishing so much but, most of what we do, it has no mass behind it, it has no depth. Why? Because we don’t pay attention, because we don’t see / notice / are aware of what we are doing. 
Because we are in a hurry and often distracted, we miss the very essence of what our existence is made of: the sense of being here, now. 
And if we miss that essence, no matter how many accomplishments we have, no matter how important they are, they will never feel good enough.

Everything passes, everything, except for the depth we can give to this moment. 
Not the moment before, not the moment later, not tomorrow, next month or next year, but the depth, the recognition we can give to this moment right here and now. 
This depth/recognition is what does not pass. 

We need to learn to give depth to the moment. 
And to start, we need to learn to stop…
…to stop and notice.
…to stop and pay attention. 
…to stop and see, feel, hear, and touch. 
…to stop and recognize that this moment is.

Stop for a moment…

Yes, I know, if our minds are very busy, worried, and occupied, to say that we need to ‘stop and recognize that this moment is’ sounds silly, totally useless, and gives us the sense of something that robs us precious time that we don’t even have!
And it is exactly because of this that so few people are able to ever have this recognition. 
And it is exactly because of this why so many people experience so much stress, anxiety, and fear. (Of course, there are many more reasons for these, but whatever reasons there are, they all start with the lack of recognition of this moment right now).

To me, stopping is one of the most fundamental things we need to learn in order to live a more meaningful life. 
And learning to stop is truly the main thing we do in the Yoga of Presence classes. 
We do the gym, but the gym, as important as it is, is not the fundamental part. 
The fundamental is the connection, the noticing, the recognition of the moment.

Truly, this moment — this one — is all we ever have, and if we are always in a hurry, we simple miss it. 
Stop, even for a few seconds, and pay attention. 
This moment is all we ever have.