We live for moments of joy and ease.

The moment your child is born. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations. The first steps into a vacation you’ve been planning for 6-months. The promotion at work. The new car. The new home. The new new. The new weekend of no plans.

These are the moments we live for.

The relief and release of our waiting ceased. The thing we’ve been waiting for is here. And if we’re lucky, we notice the moment consciously. Taking a mental snapshot of how we feel, and how this moment is. Simply being in celebration. We savor, and try hold onto the moment.

Then life washes it past, and we are on to the next.

Our life is made up of these moments. So much, that we are always chasing the next relief or gratification. We become so focused on the next milestone, the next achievement, the next time we feel fulfilled, the next time things feel right.

But when you wait for the next thing to make you happy, your happiness waits.

Your identity becomes the milestone for which you reach. Your attention is absorbed by your desire to feel something, masked by the materialization of that feeling. Your life has become objectified, impersonal.

Your attention moves past the simplicity of being here, now. No longer in the moment.

This whole idea became clear to me one evening, as I wrote myself a letter from my Future Self. I projected my attention 5 years into the future, where I imagined myself having achieved certain things and living life in a certain way.

As I wrote to my present day self from 5 years into the future, I focused on how I felt in this evolved life. I listened intuitively to my wiser, older self for clues to the present. What I heard is this:

“You’ll achieve all of this, and more. This is the easy stuff. You’ll get the house on the hill, and the Tundra in the garage. You’ll have the soulful wife, thriving family, and adventurous life. You’ll become the writer, the speaker, the man you seek to be.”

“But what is important is the journey. The moments in between. From here to there. The things are just the things. But these moments are your life.”

This is a call to action from spirit to focus, not on what can be achieved in the future, but on what is real right now. The subtle and nuance of being. The warm home of the present moment.

It’s not bad to want things, or to look forward to them. It’s not bad to crave prosperity, fame and success, and work hard toward creating these things. Goals can be incredible tools for transformation.

Wanting represents the expansion of our lives. To want is to grow. And it’s through these desires that we learn and build. Your desires are the instructions for living.

But when we substitute our sense of being with something that may happen in the future, we miss out on our lives. We separate ourselves from reality. For what is reality, other than what is right now?

This moment is all you have. Right now.

Yes, there may be an elated celebration right now. Maybe you accomplished something incredible, and you’re buzzing from the win. Or you’re reading this in line at the grocery store, bored. Or waiting for the next thing in your day. Maybe you got some bad news, or maybe you’re just sad.

No matter what is happening, you are alive right now. You are an expression of life in this very moment, regardless of content. Your being here is a miracle. Your story represents the story of all, and has it’s place in the library of forever.

Your life matters. These moments matter. You matter.

It’s in the moments in between you find grace. Compassion and love for yourself and others. Peace, amongst the dusty chaos of change. Joy, in it’s delectable simplicity.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of all is to have lived a life where every moment mattered.