I would have been no more than 10 years old, I still remember the humid summer evening  as I stood out the front of my house looking to the sky. I gazed in wonderment at a magnificent blend of pink and violet textures scattered across the heavens. A truly amazing display that caused me to take pause in wonder. Excited by the show, I desperately sought to share the experience, and it just happened to be that my mother was on her way to gather the children in for dinner.

Mum! Look at the sky! Isn’t it amazing?

What my mother replied with was I am sure, little more than a passing trivia, but it would be the catalyst for decades of reflection and an insight that has echoed throughout my life.

She said …

“Take a good look, because you will never see that sunset again. You will see many more sunsets, you will even see sunsets just as beautiful as this one, but none of them will be exactly the same. So stop and take a good look, because once it is gone, it will be gone forever”

At that very moment, my childish perspective of the world transcended into a sudden awakening….. this moment, this sunset moment,  was finite, fleeting. A feeling of loss swept over me as the sky changed before my eyes, fading slowly, retreating from the impending darkness. I was helpless to stop, or even slow down the process. For the first time in my life I really understood the value of the present moment. No matter how much I wanted the moment to last, regardless of how hard I fought to hold on, the time would pass and there was nothing I could do to stop its passing. The moment could not be retrieved, relived, changed.

Our lives are filled with Sunset Moments. Moments of pure joy. Holding your child for the first time (or the 10,000th), a connection with a good friend, the long loving gaze into the eyes of your lover when nothing else seems to exist. For the most part these moments are brief and all too often their immense value is not fully recognized until the moment has passed.

Sunset Moments is about learning to spot when you are in a moment of value, and when you do, making the most of it.  We can’t change the past, we don’t know what the future holds, all we have is now, and no guarantee of anything else. All things come to an end, both good and bad. Live wholly and completely in the moment, because it will be gone before you know it…….gone……forever!