A MOMENT is a shared experience that happens in the blink of an eye. Music happens when a note is played in a MOMENT. War starts the MOMENT a “bomb” is dropped. A parent is made the MOMENT of their child’s first cry. Love starts when two people have a MOMENT. It’s the first time you drive a car, have your first kiss, first drink, first view of the ocean, first snowball, first… that first MOMENT feeling. Then there is the first fall, first break up, first fit of anger, first crash, first broken bone. Life is a series of MOMENTS: the ones we cherish and the ones we fear. I believe it is what we do with those MOMENTS that make us who we are.

The first time I saw my wife, we had a MOMENT. It is burned in my memory forever. I look back at that MOMENT and know that I will never get it back, but remember it as part of the series of MOMENTS that made her the one person in the world I can’t live without. If I lived looking back at that one MOMENT to define me, I would not have much to live for. It's the new MOMENTS we share that make us thrive. It’s the MOMENT I see her walk through the door after work. It’s the MOMENT I see her lips turn up and eyes roll back when I say something funny. It’s the tilt of her head towards me when she needs a hug. I cherish those moments because I acted on that first MOMENT.

 

The village earth that we all live in is a collection of shared MOMENTS. The MOMENT we first made fire. The MOMENT we first set sail, the MOMENT we first wrote, the MOMENT we first flew, the MOMENT of the first phone call, the first picture, the first movie, the first man in space. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, school shootings, suicide bombings, the MOMENT the towers fell. Shock and awe.

All of those MOMENTS are big MOMENTS; the good and the bad. These MOMENTS and the ones that follow are a series of less significant MOMENTS that make us who we are. It’s the little MOMENTS that lead us to a world of unity or division, that build community or create isolationism, that build nations or unite races, that quench thirst or bring starvation, that divide neighbors or invite us to embrace strangers.