A lone, crisp note penetrates the auditorium. My fingers tremble as I hold the pitch, trying to keep my breathing steady. The lights above me burn right through my soul. I am playing all alone, and any mistake I make will be heard by the entire audience. I look out toward the seats, but can only see darkness. The conductor waves his hands slowly, and I change notes. My fingers are becoming sweaty, and slip slightly, causing a blip in the clear melody. I try to shake it off and continue playing, convincing myself that nobody really heard that little mistake.
In my head, I count: one, two, three, four, one, two, three. My life is always counting down. Every moment is lived in anticipation of the next. I am constantly thinking ahead to the next big event. Between those events, time travels in triple speed. Looking back at the past month or year, I often find that I didn’t accomplish as much as I could have. Every day was just the monotonous day at school, then work, homework, then sleep. I’m afraid that, at the end of my life, I will look back and see that life went on without me, because I was too busy waiting for things to happen. When I am always looking forward to the future, I forget to stop and enjoy the present.
The present. Right. I try to focus on the conductor. When I think I can’t hold the note any longer, a clarinet joins in harmony. Relieved, I take a quick breath then keep playing. The clarinetist plays a few soft notes, the melodies mixing and melding. The beautiful sounds cause my mind to wander from the performance.
I think about where everything began billions of years ago. At that time, our universe was just a soup of electrons and protons floating in disarray. Even light did not exist, because photons (light particles) were repelled by the free electrons floating in the air.The first element, hydrogen, was created when one proton, one neutron, and one electron came together and combined. At that point, light was finally able to exist, because there was a place to house it.
I realize that I have been wandering from the moment again. Thankfully, my hours of practice have paid off and I am still able to play the piece without having complete focus on what is really going on. I want to be able to enjoy the moment, but how? When all I’m doing is school, work, and homework, it’s difficult to be able to make those things seem worthwhile. I try to be productive, but it is so much easier to sit back and let life roll on without me.
  Some of the pressure to only think ahead comes from our society. Young people like myself are constantly being bombarded with warnings and reminders to figure out what they are doing with their lives. We are constantly told that if you don’t think ahead to graduation, and college, and your career, you’ll never go anywhere. So much emphasis is placed on the future, it is easy to brush over the present.
My mind wanders to my chemistry class, my fingers still finding the notes I need to play. I had learned that a crystallized structure of calcium, carbon, and oxygen atoms formed the stone Michelangelo used to carve his glorious statue, the Thinker. A combination of silicon, aluminum, potassium, oxygen, titanium, and other atoms led to the material the Egyptians used to build the great pyramids. Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus makeup 99% of our own human bodies. It is amazing to think that every living creature, with their own minds to live and think how they choose, was created from those smaller-than-microscopic building blocks of life.
Just like everything being made up of those tiny atoms, our lives are made up of millions of individual seconds. Everyone needs to find things to make every moment of every day worth remembering. Some people find an activity or a sport that can consume their time and make the days worthwhile. Without anything huge to fill my spare time, I have found I just need to focus on the little things. One afternoon I spent an hour or so designing a house floorplan on the computer. Although it seemed small and unimportant, one short hour spent doing something is one hour not idly wasted.
Those times when I am able to find something to do to fill my time, there is such a sense of accomplishment. For example, last winter I made a quilted table runner to donate to a charity event. Every spare moment I had, you could hear the “chink, chink” of the sewing machine as I stitched pieces of festive fabric together. It took several months, and endless trips to the fabric store, but once I finished, I had something to show for those long hours. I felt accomplished because I had a physical representation that my time wasn’t wasted. I was able to fill my time with something that would benefit others and make my existence more meaningful.
I jump back to the present and notice that we have been joined by the low sound of a tuba, rumbling the ground and adding solidity to the floating harmonies. The rhythm picks up pace and more instruments join in; the trumpets, flutes, trombones and bassoons contribute their quiet individual pitches to create chords and harmonies.We split into individual rhythms, connecting with each other and leading to a loud, inspiring climax, each playing our own melodies, yet creating one piece of music. The conductor waves his arms madly and the music blares majestically throughout the room. I anticipate my next notes and hit them with accuracy.
It takes a balance of anticipating and living in the now to be successful. If I live constantly in the present, and never look ahead, I won’t be able to foresee the outcomes of my choices, or what I need to do to be happy and successful in the future. I would be lost. But on the opposite end, if I only live in the future I’ll miss the things going on in my life right now. Life will continue to be a constant countdown to the next future event, and when it arrives, I’ll begin counting to the next.
It is hard to try and make my time worthwhile when I can’t think of specific things to do all the time, but the key is to take it minute by minute. If I have a spare ten minutes, I can go clean my room, or paint a picture. While those things don’t seem like they would be able to fill my time, I’ve realized they add up. People say you only remember the things that are abnormal in your everyday routine. I have seen the truth in that, because when I do something productive I remember it. I remember my day, or month, or year being more worthwhile.
But more than just filling the time, I am better able to live in the moment when I help others. Whether it’s just doing dishes for my mom, or crocheting a hat for a neighbor’s new baby, I find when I am so focused on someone else I hardly have time to think about myself and how I have to go to work in an hour, or how I have school on Monday. I am able to pause the countdown and focus more on what I’ve been missing: the right now. The little moments really add up and make life amazing.
For example, when I look at beautiful scenery like the Grand Canyon, I don’t think of all the individual electrons and nuclei that made up those red rocks and stunning views. I don’t envision the molecules bonding and I don’t even consider that things so small can combine to create such a masterpiece. But they did. It all started with those tiny building blocks of life, just as our individual lives are made of the small things that happen. One event doesn’t define your entire life’s story. Our lives are a combination of millions of individual moments, and as we are able to greater appreciate those moments, life will become memorable, and truly a masterpiece.
I hear that the climax of the song has dimmed, and the trumpets and flutes drop out. The rest of us play even softer, but are still filled with that musical energy.
The trombones, bassoons, tuba, and then the clarinet stop playing until only I am left playing my proud note. Although I still play alone, I am confident, because the music has energized me. Now completely focused on what is really happening, I can appreciate those soft vibrations in my instrument and the resonating sound in the air. I hear the rustling of papers in the audience and see the conductor motioning slowly. I hold the pitch and quiet gradually until the sound is no longer audible, then stop playing, only a ringing echo of a note left in the room.