Living in the Moment
I realized something the other day. I was a playgroup chatting with a mom that I was "clicking" with and feeling bummed that she's moving away from here in April. It's all too common that I find someone that could become a good friend and find out they're moving away in the next few months. It already happened with a family we met shortly after arriving here. They had us over for dinner when we were in temporary housing and they moved back to the States in January. Anyway, being sad about it is not my point. As Wayne said, "now you know how I grew up." It's a way of life in/around the military. People PCS (permanent change of station) all the time, it's a transient community. Anyway, I realized that I was trying to set up a predictability for what I think of as "my 3 years here (now already much closer to 2 1/2) that is contrary to what an experience living abroad should be. It reminded me of the main principle in Eckart Tolle's book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose on which I took Oprah's class, which is the importance of being fully present in each moment. It's true that we miss so much of what life if offering us in each moment when we're thinking forward to other things or our mind is on past events. Living in Europe should be about living in the moment and experiencing new things, even if it's spending one day with someone interesting. I'll take away things from that conversation or chance meeting. So, though it's still very sad to not be able to share Greta with everyone back home on a regular basis, I resolve to try to make the most of the relatively short time we'll be living in Germany.
