Listen While You Still Can

It can be very hard to see far into the future and for most of us still moving between this rock and space and time, there just is no point to it. To know what you will be doing one year from now (or even the next few days) is an exercise in a futility that will most likely change anyhow. However if you look back at the events that did transpire, you can sometimes see a trend or common thread that from time to time, made a significant etch in the shaping of your character.

Two interesting souls making their way up Reid's Ridge in Smith-Dorian area.

The thread that makes it's impression upon me is the people who have come into my life (sometimes if only briefly) to which I have connected both emotionally and spiritually. These individuals may be on some large orbit of their own but as our paths cross we connect, share ideas, grow quickly, and become something more than we could just as ourselves. Like a small collision, leaving a smudge of paint, we both carry on looking a little different then when we started.

You can not find these people, even if you searched them out. But you can increase your odds of running into them for sure by keeping to circles of commonality, like joining some club, involvement in sports and like-minded lifestyles. But you can't force it.

It's great to look back on those times and connections but what is really important here is what is happening now. I know I have had these enormous personalities contend with mine, I know I have had amazing experiences with intimidating souls, and the spirits who have inspired me. They have all left their mark. But I can no longer interact with them, those moments as sweet as they were, are no longer anything more then dusty memory.

What IS happening now IS important. I need to ask myself, "are there individuals within my world right now who will leave their mark, who will make a sea-change in my life, who's path has been set before me so that we may both benefit from what we have to give"? And if so, then these experiences require my full attention. If I get the honour of interacting with these beautiful souls then I should listen while I still can. What could be better than consciously enjoying these conversations, these moments, these shared adventures in the real time now?

There is a popular saying, "Stop and smell the flowers" but these days it should be, "Listen while you still can". Our lives are busier than ever, our attention spans are shot, and more of us seem to be holding on to the past in unhealthy ways. Live now, live deep, enjoy those special relationships and as fleeting as they may be, let them leave their mark.