Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
Emily: But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.

But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking. And Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you!

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

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Backstory to my relationship with this quote.

Back in 1968 I was given a part in my high school play--Our Town. I was a couple of years into my "new life"--my mother had divorced my father, and I was on the other side of the pendulum swing from daily stress and anxiety to a completely joyous and carefree life. It was really like waking up to life. I glommed on to everything--friends, activities, learning, laughing. In my diary I wrote "I even love hating homework because homework is part of life and I love life."

So this specific play was emblematic of my life at this time so it was a gift to have been given the opportunity to express it on stage--that is, my desire to grab onto everything: the "sunflowers...food... coffee.. new-ironed dresses."

It's hard to sustain that level of awakening and realization. After a while I got caught up in distractions that kept me from plugging into that joy as a constant state, but it's still what I aspire to and try to practice.
This one rings so true to me right now. As my workometer keeps inexorably ticking down toward zero I'm more and more aware of the time flying past. It seems like suddenly I've gone from "my god, adult life is so exciting! I wonder what my best friend C is doing? Maybe he wants to go to happy hour" and then being focused on that moment and not thinking about what may happen the next day. to "I've been working 32 years and plan to work another 7. Where does the time go?" as I pack an amazon return, make SO's lunch for tomorrow and chop veggies for tonight's shrimp stir fry dinner. The reality is that I'm just as happy, and present, doing the things I'm doing this evening as I was doing the things I was doing 30 years ago. In both cases I'm very present in the moment and very grateful for that moment but the moment is not at all the same and it makes me wonder what that moment will be for me 10, 20, 30 years down the road if I should be lucky enough to be still having moments then.