Letting the Moment Be In You

It all started last night when I was putting Rypp to bed. He’s developed this fear of his monitor — the little camera we have in his room to check whether he actually needs us when he wakes up in the middle of the night, or if he’s going to put himself back to sleep. This is one of those arts that you learn as a parent: sometimes, he really needs a hug or else he’s going to puke everywhere, and sometimes, he’s complaining for the sake of complaining and will be asleep again in moments.

As I was telling him his last story of the night, he became apoplectic, pointing at the monitor and telling me that it scared him, it made noise, and that he needed to put it “outside the gate.” We use a dog gate to keep him in his room at night, which we installed once he got his big kid bed and wanted to run into our room every five minutes, where he would then proceed to sleep kick us throughout the night.

This monitor fear is pretty new. Catter’s dealt with it by moving it to a new location that didn’t bother him as much, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards for me last night. So, instead, I suggested that we make it into a coral reef. I put a giant stuffed panda on top of it (ecosystem correctness be damned), and within a couple of minutes, he and I had used every single one of his stuffies and built a structure around the monitor. It’s the only coral reef I’ve ever seen where great white sharks co-exist happily with dragons, pandas, dogs, rainbow fish and a whole family of turtles.

He stared at it, smiled, and said, “Look, Dad, we made a reef.” Then he went to sleep, and slept through the night.

I wasn’t there when he woke up this morning; by the time he got up (and told Catter that she had to look at his coral reef a few times), I was already on my run for the day.

It was cool outside today — somewhere in the high sixties or low seventies — with no humidity: perfect running weather. I set out a little fast to help my body warm up.

I spent my time focusing on my stride during the run, going through what is normally a 4.6 mile loop, when something magical happened. I was at the top of the steepest hill on the run, a 400m corkscrew downhill through a horse farm, and I had just passed another jogger who was stretching at the top of the hill.

Then, all of a sudden, I was going fast. Not just fast for a long-distance run; fast for an all-out sprint. Gravity was pulling me downhill quickly, and my legs were finding the ground underneath me and helping me glide down smoothly. I hadn’t felt that fast on my feet… well, ever. I’d felt that speed and that rush before, but only on skis, and only for the briefest moments. This lasted to the bottom of the hill, and then it happened again on the next hill.

I felt so good that I extended my run by more than a mile, clocking 5.76 miles and reducing my mile splits by over 30 seconds over my Sunday run.

More importantly, though, the run was actually fun. It wasn’t hard work; it was tiring, sure, and by the end of it I was definitely feeling the extra distance, but it was still fun. It was the first time I’d actually had fun on a whole run ever. Usually, I like running because it gives my head lots of empty space, and that’s why I’ve done it — it lets me zone out.

This wasn’t lost on me while I was running. This idea that I’ve been spending decades pounding the pavement and that today, for the first time, I enjoyed myself? What on earth have I been doing?

I’m still trying to be a better toddler, so I didn’t really focus on that. I just enjoyed the run.

Then I got home and enjoyed breakfast with Catter and Rypp.

Then I enjoyed playing scary ghost with Rypp by his stuffie coral reef, which basically consists of him leaving the room, shouting ‘boo,’ and coming in and asking if I was scared.

(Of course I was.)

This got me thinking — when you read self-help stuff, it talks to you about “being in the moment.” They advise you to put your cell phones down and simply enjoy what you’re doing. It’s one of those few pieces of actionable advice that seems to be given over and over and over.

And what I’ve felt today is definitely what you’re supposed to feel by being in the moment. I’m enjoying myself, and while I know that there’s plenty of other stuff I’ve got to worry about, those things are just challenges to overcome, not problems.

This isn’t how it usually works for me. Usually, I have a good moment, and it lasts until that moment ends. If the next moment is a bad one (and I’ve had a few of those today as well), that overshadows the good one and makes me forget all about it.

It’s gotten me thinking, though. I’m not sure that I’m actually ‘in’ the moment. There’s no single moment I’m in. There have been some highlights, but the fun has been lasting well past when it normally would have gone off to sleep.

I’m actually carrying those good moments through with me, adding more good ones to it as I go on, and not letting the downers get to me by looking at them as if they were puzzles to be solved.

The moment is living in me, not the other way around. And the real question is, how do I keep it there? How do I stop myself from being afraid that it’s going to leave and that things just won’t be as much fun again?

I don’t have a good answer for that. Right now, I’m just letting the moment be, and I’m trying to figure out what food it likes best. And, oddly, I’m not all that afraid that it’s going to leave.