What Living is all About

I was reading Anne Tyler's new book, A Spool of Blue Thread, and came across this passage, which I thought was a lovely idea.

This is the reverend's speech during a funeral.

"I didn't know Mrs Whitshank," he said, "and therefore I don't have the memories that the rest of you have. But it has occurred to me, on occasion, that our memories of our loved ones might not be the point. Maybe the point is their memories - all that they take away with them. What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth. The hardware store their father owned with the cat asleep on the grass seed, and the friend they used to laugh with till the tears streamed down their cheeks, and the Saturdays when their grandchildren sat next to them gluing Popsicle sticks. The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. 'That's what my experience has been,' they say and it gets folded in with the others - one more report on what living felt like. What is was like to be alive."

As a follow-up to my last post about mindfulness and presence, it seems I keep running across ideas and concepts that speak to me about taking the time to focus on what I am doing, right now, presently, so I can remember more bits and pieces of what it felt to be alive. Letting go of all the chatter in our heads about the past, and the future, to see today truly for what it is...it's a different perspective, isn't it? Could be. Why not give it a try?