Simultaneously

The other day, I was out on the street at a different time than usual. It was just before school started. I saw caring mothers with small children walking towards kindergarten. Groups of primary school children, who were already making their way alone. Teenagers on bicycles. High school graduates in imaginative costumes, because it was "theme week" - the week just before the final exams, when creativity is given unlimited freedom.

I felt nostalgic because I had lived through all these phases with my two daughters, or had watched them do so. Suddenly, I longed for those times, which had all been wonderful in their own special way. And sometimes challenging.

But I realized that I also like my current life situation, in which the children have already moved out, are standing on their own feet and are enriching my life from afar with their experiences, adventures and adult thoughts.

Then I went even further back in my thoughts - to the time before I had children, when I was a student myself, a kindergardener, a toddler. I realized that I was attached to every phase of my life. Each one had had its own unique flavor. There had been challenges in each of them, but also deep feelings of happiness that I would have loved to relive right away.

I thought: "If only I could experience everything at the same time - right now!"

And then I realized: I can.

Every moment is fleeting, even the present one. There is only one moment, the present moment, ever. All moments are equally valuable and equally true, at any time in our lives. The present is no truer than the past. 

I close my eyes and am a little girl, a student, a young mother. I experience the curiosity, the fears, the happiness, the suffering. See, hear, feel. My freedom, my choice, at all times.