Just a moment…

I love the word moment. For such a small word it holds so much potential. You hold your breath ‘for a moment’ to hear the outcome of something important. You shout ‘just a moment’ when you dash back into the house to grab something important that you can’t leave home without (in my case, that’s normally the car keys and my credit card). We face ‘moments of truth’ all the time, when we have to make those difficult decisions that we’d really rather not but have to nonetheless, and we live, or at least we are encouraged to live ‘for the moment’. We also have ‘moments’ all the time (personally I have a lot!) when we forget things, feel a little disorientated, or just can’t think straight.

But do you also have those ‘life is good’ moments? You know, when you catch yourself looking out at the world and thinking ‘yeah, this is pretty amazing’ with a great big smile on your face? OK, so everyone around you probably looks at you like you’re stark raving bonkers but who cares, right? It’s a good feeling in that moment that no one can touch… and usually gives me goosebumps. Sometimes, moments can become momentous, the addition of three little letters makes all the difference and turns a seemingly simple moment into a historic occasion.

I’ve been lucky enough to have quite a few this week (moments that is, not momentous occasions, although maybe one or two will prove otherwise!). Anyway, if all my moments from the week add up to some sort of karmic bank balance then I think I went dangerously close to being in the red yesterday morning when a jolly troop of workmen started digging up the road at 8.30am with a pneumatic drill… the road in question being the one right outside my house. Noise aside, the reverberation shuddered right through with the force of a 100 washing machines being on full spin at the same time!

Needless to say my quiet blog time has been deferred until to now and the wonderfully peaceful sound of silence. Thank goodness for Sundays!

So back to my ‘moments’. OK, so first up, I went to the ballet last Sunday to see Swan Lake. I’d forgotten how amazing dance can be in telling a story, it was beyond mesmerising. It was stunning to the point of moving… there were a lot of tissues being discreetly passed around and eyes being subtly dabbed at the end let me tell you – the dramatic portrayal of the story was THAT good. Sniff…

Next up, we had a big meeting at work for all staff this week, which involved complex logistical links via video with other offices across Asia and a lot of work for the senior company figure who was presenting… anyway, long story short, everything went really well, but what gave me goosebumps was watching the audience drink in a short video clip that featured some inspirational words set to music and then hearing the senior figure speak. It was electric. It reminded me why I like doing what I do, writing speeches, writing articles, writing anything that moves people, that gives them ‘a moment’… I love it, I love the impact and I love the fact that people might think differently about things as a result.

Which leads me neatly on to my next ‘moment’. Out for dinner on Friday with some close friends I was chatting to a teacher from the UK. As we talked and moaned about the current situation in the UK and compared it to the rest of the world, she recounted how she had taken several parties of students abroad to the Gambia and to India. The bit that gave me goosebumps listening to her though was the fact that having taken these inner city students from in many cases impoverished backgrounds (but by third world standards, incredibly privileged) to countries where just surviving from day to day is a challenge, the kids came back changed. Changed, humbled and with a new outlook on life. That’s the bit I love. Again with the change bit, but a change, I am sure in the majority of cases, for the better. What a fantastic legacy and what an amazing opportunity for those students.

Needless to say, all these ‘moments’ just kept bringing me back to my book. So here I am with a clear Sunday afternoon ahead of me to spend writing my last Act. I know I have lots of moments already built in so I am feeling quite inspired to write more in to the ending… after all this is why I write. I want to change the world. Oops, rewind! Er, did I just say I want to change the world!? Rather a lofty ambition that! All I can say in response to that incredibly idealistic aspiration is this… a very short story that I heard a long time ago on a leadership development course and that really resonated with me (yes, even more than yesterday’s pneumatic drill did!). I apologise in advance if I’ve blogged about it before, but some things are just too good not to repeat.

Basically, the story goes like this… it’s early morning and a little girl is walking along the beach holding hands with her father. There’s been a huge storm the night before and although the sky is still a little overcast, the sun is rapidly burning the clouds away bringing with it the promise of a scorching hot summer’s day. As they walk further along the beach they come across a few starfish, then a few more, then literally hundreds upon hundreds of starfish that have been uprooted from their normal shelters by the ferocity of the storm and catapulted onto the shore to face the blazing sunshine that will kill them. Aghast at the fate the starfish are facing, the little girl starts carefully picking them up one by one and putting them back into the water, calling for her father to help her. Her father looks at her with a seasoned smile and says ‘there’s too many of them, you can’t possibly make a difference’, to which the little girl replies (continuing to place one starfish back in the water after another) ‘I know, but look, it’s made a difference to that one, and that one, and that one…’.

Sigh.. that story gets me every time. I love it. I want to be like that little girl – making a difference however large or small, just making a difference somehow. Just like the ballet dancers, just like the work video and just like the experience those students had.

I’ve got a bit, ok, a lot, of work to do, but if I can make the moments in my book real for children so that it makes them think that the impossible is possible then that could just be something momentous. I have goosebumps all over again…

🙂