The Moment

I was working with an acting coach on a piece and she stopped me and said something that really hit me. She said when she had been an actor doing a monologue, she had always felt like she needed to "get to the moment". She felt like she needed to be working towards this thing when she was performing her art. And then she realized one day that each single moment is what made up the piece. Each moment was its own unique experience. And she realized that it was far more interesting to have an experience in each moment she was present onstage than to fly through it trying to accomplish something.

Since then, I have completely changed the way I think about doing monologues or pieces in auditions. And although it is a habit I am working to develop and does not come naturally.... to live in this moment... and now this one.... and now this one.... when I am able to feel like I am doing it my experience of the piece I am performing feels like a story unfolding. Which is what it should feel like.

BUT I realized the other day that I not only try to rush through audition pieces instead of experiencing them but I also just rush through life. I constantly feel like I am working to GET somewhere. To achieve something. I feel like God will reveal some grand purpose and then I will have made it. Then I will be living life.

This was in my Beth Moore Bible study last week:

"At strategic times of internal war I stop and ask myself, 'What if this is a critical moment? What if this very thing, this very decision, is the most important piece of the puzzle comprising my purpose?'"

Whoa. What if I am flying through life trying to achieve something at some point in the distant future when this moment, THIS one, this one where I am single, in New York City, working at a hedge fund, getting ready to perform at a show at Columbia is the most important piece of God's puzzle for me? What if it is and I'm treating it like it's just this thing that I need to scuffle through in order to get to the thing God has really designed me for? What if I treated every day with the significance that perhaps it is the most important piece of the puzzle? What if I really lived in this moment with God and this moment only?

Well. I think it would change the way I lived. And I think, at the end of my life all of the experiences would add up to a much more beautiful, fulfilling and God-centered story.

(Photo by Susan Nacorda)