"In the Moment"

Have you ever been in a situation where someone that you knew was having a hard time and all you could do was to be there for them to hold their hand? What I have learned in those situations is that it is about really being present for someone when they are working through something in their life that is life changing. I bring this up because it is something that seems to be a theme in my own life these last few weeks as some of my family and friends are making some incredible transitions in their lives.

 For those of us who are standing on the sidelines sometimes the real challenge is not to take it upon ourselves to fix or even take on the situation but to allow the other person to move through their own experience. In some instances it may seem easier to take over someone else's pain or even do it for them but this only creates more problems later on down the road. I remember once years ago when I ran to one of my spiritual teachers upset after I had taken it upon myself to help someone solve a problem and fixed their life only to find that they had repeated the same situation that I had helped them solve. My teacher then explained to me that when we step into someone else's life to solve a problem for them we only delay what they needed to learn.

 On the outside it may look good but if the person doesn't learn how to maneuver through and around obstacles in their life then they continue to repeat the pattern until they do. It is nothing personal but for me at that time it was such a disappointment. The other side of the coin was that by trying to fix someone else's problems I wasn't paying attention to my own life causing me to repeat unhealthy patterns that I didn't have time to solve.

What I have learned out of all of this was that as we all evolve from our experiences interacting with each other we discover how important it is to be in the moment when someone needs you to witness what they are learning about as they move through their own experience. Also how crucial it is to have healthy boundaries so that we all can continue to grow.

Photographs by Steve Noyce - Rome, Italy