Mental Snapshots...

Some of you who read this will already know what I'm talking about when I say take 'mental snapshots.' A few years back (well closer to a handful now) I was given some great advice from a teacher/friend on my first international excursion. He said to our group, "you will never be in this moment, with these people ever again." But it wasn't to say cherish just 'this' moment exactly. He was referring instead to EVERY moment, every second that we spend of our lives. Because that is what we do is spend time. We can't save it, slow it down, or go back. And every second is one in which we will never be in again with the exact same people. It is impossible. Once the second is spent...it is gone. So...

Take mental snapshots. Cherish the moments, the seconds. Record them vividly in your memory. The glow of lights on a Christmas Eve drive. Or, the smell of the pizza in the oven while you're discussing the latest gossip about Twilight with your sister. The face of the people you love the moment you come out of the arrival gate at the airport (this one will forever and always be a favorite every time.) Watching your best friend turn down the dial on the radio to talk, then watch her turn it up, and turn it back down again throughout the conversation, knowing this is one of the things you love about her. It's grandiose things. It's small things. But they are the things that make life worth living, and I think sometimes no matter where we are in the world, the mundaneness of routine can cause us to hurry through things and waste our mental snapshots...waste our seconds, waste our lives.

I'm guilty of it myself here in Switzerland. I get up in the morning at the same time, prepare the same things, and take the same bus. The repetition of it all....it can make things boring. I loathe boredom. As do most of us. But thankfully, I was shocked back to life this last week one morning at school. I was standing in the church where we're working with my little hammer in my hand, looking at the 15th century frescoe we're cleaning, and I was like: 'holy crap! I'm taking a hammer to something that is 600 years old! Who does that? Wait...I do!!'

It was a mental snapshot moment-standing on the scaffolding, with 5 layers of clothing on to combat the cold-hammer and scalpel in hand. I told myself that I wasn't going to get caught up in the evilness that is 'routine.' Not any more. Even if that means I get up at a different time every morning. Life is too wonderful for that. No matter where we are, it's full of beautiful moments we shouldn't let slip by unrecorded, unappreciated.

I recorded so many this last week- watching soccer on a computer with my two Italians friends, complete with cursing and hand gestures as the live stream would freeze each time the teams approached the goal, buying a second hand coat from a Swiss-Italian woman in a little antique store who exclaimed with delight how nice it was to have young people in her store instead of the normal grandmother crowd, laughing with my classmates on the train as we created our 'Vitamin Shock' (long story) music video-Swiss Alps flying past the window, the mass surge of people in costume young and old departing the train when we arrive in Bellinzona for Carnevale complete with an italian drinking chant, or even being consumed with fascination as I learned something more about the chemistry of wall paintings and the reconversion of darkened lead white (yes I know this is dorky, but being reminded of why I love this so much was such an incredible feeling!!).

I have so many more, but I think you get the picture. Life is a blessing. What we do with it, how we remember it, is up to us. So don't let the routines get you- stop for a moment and take a mental snapshot of your life in that very second because once you're there, the moment is gone.