Every Moment As If It's Your Last

 Every Moment As If It’s Your Last

Three Arctic explorers, shipwrecked in 1929 on the mountainous, remote west coast of Greenland, contemplate the stunning beauty of the scene. Ignoring their predicament, one says, “Maybe we have lived only to be here now.”

                                                                                                          Barry Lopez

                                                                                                          Arctic traveler and writer

                                                                                                          1945 - 2020

While reading the quote, paraphrased above, from Barry Lopez’ National Book Award winner, “Arctic Dreams,” I was struck by the similarity between the man’s response to his dire situation and that of an individual in an old Zen story. As the story goes, a man, chased by a tiger, leapt over a cliff to save himself. As he fell, he caught hold of a vine growing on the cliffside. Another hungry tiger awaited him at the base of the cliff. Then a mouse started to chew on the vine. As he dangled from his vanishing lifeline, the man spied a strawberry growing on the cliff. It was red-ripe, warmed by the sun. He reached out and placed it in his mouth. It was delicious.

A take from this story: It’s not your Hollywood, happy-ending kind of tale. The man dies. He does so while savoring his last moments. When you think about it, we humans all are dangling from a thread. The Covid 19 Pandemic has brought this fact home to many. We all will die, and may not know when or how. The moral of the story: savor each precious moment of life. The moment is all we have, and is where we, in fact, live.