Listen: http://www.jimreedbooks.com/mp3/ifonlyamomentlasted.mp3

or read on….

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Life, actually…

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IF ONLY FOREVER LASTED A MOMENT,

IF ONLY A MOMENT LASTED FOREVER

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Things I have learned that don’t make common sense but seem true all the same:

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1. There’s no such thing as a moment that lasts for just a moment.

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It’s been seventy years since I last rolled myself around the back yard inside an empty oil drum, but that moment plays itself back to me whenever I recall the good times of being a child who had nothing to worry about but mosquito bites, Orange Crush colas and the next playmate’s visit. That moment has lasted nearly a lifetime.

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2.  Time never proceeds at an even pace.

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Waiting in a soundproofed dentist’s office while frowning people disappear through a doorway and later come hobbling out, transmogrified, is a time-altering experience. Ten minutes seems like ten  hours. But one sweet first and only kiss from a girlfriend you’ll never see again occurs in an instant, and you wish it had lasted an hour. In green memory, it’s still going on.

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3.  If you lose your car keys, it will only happen when you’re late for something really important.

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The more frantically you search, the longer the keys stay lost. It’s only later, when you don’t need them at all, that you find them sitting in plain view, just five inches from where you’re used to seeing them.

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4.  When you’re old, you still refer to old people as old people, as if you’re the exception.

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Even in her 80′s, my mother hated to hang out with “those old people,” because she never took a nap in her life and didn’t understand why anybody would…there was so much to do that could only be done while conscious. I’m always shocked when I find that that old person over there is actually ten years younger than me!

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5.  I’ll always be twenty years old.

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No matter what age I attain, I never feel that I’m over twenty. When I glimpse myself in the mirror, I mutter, “What alien being has thrown my body away and replaced it with this Halloween costume?” Holy Moly! Nature is some jokester.

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 6.  I’ll never get it all said.

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I’ve been writing at least one personal column or story a week for 45 years now, not to mention all the stories and columns I wrote during earlier decades when I had to write what my bosses required. When I began writing solely what I wanted to write, I assumed I would write myself out, that all my thoughts and stories would be told, that there would be nothing more to say. But each time I sit at the keyboard, apply pencil to pad, ink some thought on a wayward napkin, I am amazed that, once again, something gets said. What’s this all about?

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7. Even if I don’t think it’s important, you just might…and vice versa.  

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Writing down thoughts and feelings and inspirations—if done honestly and spontaneously—just might mean something to somebody who reads them…so it’s important that the writers of words refrain from making judgements about what is written. You and I are not competent to determine what is important and what is unimportant, so we should get out of the way of what we write and allow other readers and other generations to conduct the critiques. We are merely taking dictation from our innards. Let it happen!

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That’s all I have to say at this moment, but beware of the next moment, and the next

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.