Perfect the Moment. Seize the Day and Perfect It

by Mira

More important than seizing the day or the moment is perfecting them, adding those touches that make them beautiful, heartwarming, and memorable

I was in town yesterday at a rock concert with a good friend of mine, and it was quite delightful. Then, when we left the music auditorium, my friend suggested we go out for a drink and something to eat. So we went to a bargain-priced restaurant in the Old Town and enjoyed polenta with cheese and some mulled wine.

The evening was perfect. We got a little tipsy and talked, and for an hour it was as if the rest of the restaurant had dissolved and all there was was us talking to each other across a small table. No, we weren’t that drunk, but we do have a strong connection.

When we left the restaurant, we started talking about Freddie Mercury and the new biopic about him, Bohemian Rhapsody. And how Freddie left his wealth to the woman he loved the best all his life. Then we talked about love, and how in India there are over three hundred types of love, compared to the four or five or six types handed down to us since the times of the Ancient Greek: eros (romantic or sexual love, or love of beauty), storge (familial love), philia (love of friends and brotherly love), agape (unconditional God-like love), and, in some accounts, pragma (practical, rational love) and philautia (self-love) as well. True, John Alan Lee took the first main types and varied them a bit in his 1973 book Colous of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving, and also included playful love (ludus) and a blend of ludus and eros (mania), but for the most part, writers continue to rehash and recycle definitions for eros, storge, philia, and agape.

K. Coomaraswamy in The Dance of Shiva, however, apparently refers to “three hundred and sixty kinds of the fine emotions of the lover’s heart.” I’ll have to read The Dance of Shiva, for the reference to it that included the above quote didn’t elaborate on those kinds of love.

But this article is not so much about love, although love is certainly a necessary ingredient in what I think is enormously important in life: perfecting the moment. More and more nowadays people spread themselves thin in and around their phones and computers, and forget the power of sinking into a moment, deep into the heart of a moment and their own hearts.

More and more these days I feel that I’m tired of the old computer and would rather not look at my phone at all for long stretches of time if I could help it. I feel that life is slowly sliding by and the only remedy is to perfect small moments in order to curve time and get a little bit more out of it than a straight line.

Perfect the Moment – T-Shirt

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in charge of this Perfect Moment – Pinback Button

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I saw a statement today on Pinterest, where I sometimes dawdle (briefly) in search of inspiration and the pulse of the Zeitgeist, so to speak, and this statement read, “When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you (quote by personal development coach Lolly Daskal).”

Perfect the Moment – Card

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Perfect, Seize the Moment – Tote Bag

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We also sometimes forget that our friends can be an enormous source of inspiration, and that a dinner with a friend can lead to incredible rejuvenation of spirit and ideas. I, for one, forget this truth much too often (partly because dinner in town seems like an expense I should forgo as much as possible). Even yesterday, when I met up with my good friend, I thought we would go to the concert and that would be it. I didn’t consider us wining and dining each other afterwards :) And it was wonderful. We were tired and overwhelmed with certain things, but sitting there talking and drinking our wine we felt – to use a cliche – wrapped in comfort and love.

It’s funny how easily we forget how to perfect certain experiences, isn’t it? We either overdo it, by drinking too much, or we forget the value of sharing a nice glass of wine with our friends. Some of us also forget that we need to listen to more music or watch more movies in movie theaters. Or that we have wanted for the longest time to go dancing and kept putting it off until we forgot about it. In my case, because I wanted to lose some weight first and get my body more limber with calesthenics.

O for a life of sensations . . . (Keats quote) – Mug

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Party, Party, Party – T-Shirt

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We should also seek people whose energies combine with others much like the amplitude of waves going in the same direction. It doesn’t mean that our friends should be similar to us, only that they should be oriented energetically in a way which makes turn our meetings into constructive interference, to use the language of physics.

I, for instance, get in touch every day with an aunt I care a lot about (love dearly, in fact), but our communication, while good, doesn’t jibe. We share so many things, but our words don’t mesh together. On the other hand, I have a friend I email with daily who always resonates with me and whose emails give me a boost of energy as I write her about my day. I also leave our communication feeling good about our combined vibes, and having renewed focus and inspiration for my projects.

We’re bound to have in life all sorts of relationships, not all of them resulting in higher emotional / mental / energetic amplitudes even as they may be nourishing or expanding our reach emotionally / mentally / spiritually, so it’s really important to seek the company of people who make us feel in their presence like a fish gliding through water rather than like one that gasps for air in search of more words to express what we’re going through. Sometimes it’s hard to find these people, but they are there, and they're looking for someone like us too.

Friends and tea make a sweet combination – Bone-China Tea Cup

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Coral Reef Marine Life: Fish and Animals – Tote Bag

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And we should seek our friends’ and family’s bodily presence more, too. My interactions with the aunt I’m daily on the phone are quite a different story when I’m in her bodily presence. I never have enough of her when I’m with her that way. It’s true that words are sometimes so ineffectual when it comes to certain kinds of deeper communication.

I’m actually rather worried about this whole trend of falling back on text messages on our phones to keep our relationships alive instead of trying to be there for our friends and family in person. And to think that even email use between friends and family has been declining steadily over the past decade. At least email gave us a chance to write about ourselves and what we feel more extensively; it feels so awkward to write long passages about what we feel on WhatsApp, for instance, that many people keep much of their emotions to themselves in the absence of an in-person meeting.  

And so it is that life goes on and we don’t really share much of it with our friends and family.

So here’s to some mulled wine, heart-to-heart conversations, and uplifting cheer this holiday season!

Updated: 12/17/2020, Mira
 
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Mira on 12/16/2018

Hi Derdriu. Glad you like the products. They're not all mine :)
The singer and band are not anything phoneomenal but the performance was nice.
I haven't been to an Asaf Avidan concert, nor did I know about him. We get a very limited range of music concerts here in Bucharest. Asaf Avidan has a poignant voice.

DerdriuMarriner on 12/15/2018

Mira, Thank you for the contexts and the products. The bag, card and t-shirt are exceptional! Who was playing at the rock concert?
In another direction, have ever caught any of Asaf Avidan's concerts?

Mira on 12/14/2018

Thank you, Pam. Yes, friendships should mean doing things together. I was just remembering yesterday, for instance, how much I lived in the company of other people when I was in my twenties. Unfortunately, as we grow older we share less with our friends, and doing just dinner, for instance, isn't enough.

I worry about the younger generation too, but I also worry about so many of the jobs on the job market where people are treated as expendables rather than assets.

dustytoes on 12/13/2018

I worry so much for this generation and what they will potentially miss by being too absorbed in technology. Of course it's not relegated to one generation, but the younger people (like my 21 year old son) are so dependent upon it. I love your upbeat nature Mira and have enjoyed reading this page.
First we have to make the effort to create memories with our friends and that means doing things together. That is what keeps us friends. Later in life, it may become more difficult as most people become more family oriented. I'm in my 60's now and I have little in common with my old friends because 1. They are still married and 2. They all have grandkids! But, whenever we talk or get together I feel the same as I did 30 years ago. And we still have a lot to talk about.

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