One Moment In Time

Balanced Rock

The first three National Parks I visited on my #journeyman trek all liberally used a "one moment in time" theme (cue the Whitney Houston).

Each park - Zion, Grand Canyon, and Arches - sit on the Colorado Plateau. Each park was made of ancient layers of sediment that was pressed down into sandstone and then elevated by plate tectonics. Millions of years later a river rolled through or the rain and wind raged, and the landscape changed. They are all still changing today in fact, as rocks fall and sands move. I know all of this because I diligently watched the visitors center movie at each park. 

It's like the 1970's "be here now" movement. These parks are here right now, but in a hundred or a thousand years, mere seconds in their history, they'll be completely different. 

Like the parks, we are also find ourselves in a unique one moment in time. Unique to each of us. Unique to our pressed down layers of experience. Unique to the storms of tumult that weather our mountains of knowledge. Unique to the winding river of life that cuts through our personal landscape. 

We will all change. We will grow taller, delve deeper, shift in one direction or the other, and lose things along the way. But through it all we gain experience, uniqueness, and beauty. We really aren't so different from the Grand Canyon, the Balanced Rock, or the Virgin River Narrows. We are unique.

All we really have and all we can control is this one moment in time. Your past layers of experience got you here and future erosion cannot be predicted, so all that really matters is... now. 

Now we have a choice: lament the past and stress about the future, or be here now to marvel in the beauty of this one moment in time.

I say we choose to be here now, because like these national parks your unique moment in time is a pretty magnificent place to be.