The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment

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For as long as I could remember, I'd been on an endless quest to know the truth.

From meditation retreats to books and lectures to altered states of mind—I was desperate to reach the root of it all.

But what did it even mean to know something absolutely?

All I knew was this: whenever someone spoke a truth—

A teacher proclaiming.
A book declaring.
A guru promising.

Something in me resisted.

A counterpoint would rise. A quiet “yes, but…”

And with it, their truth dissolved.

Because my mind always had a counterpoint.

I've been reading a book called The Book of Ichigo Ichie.

The Japanese concept of Ichigo Ichie is the recognition that every moment is unrepeatable.

Every encounter, every breath, every ordinary Tuesday afternoon is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

You don’t know when it will be your last coffee with a friend, your last sunset you’ll ever experience, or your last chance to say what needs to be said before life ends.

And that’s the truth about life that we pretend not to know: it could end tomorrow.

I don’t say this to frighten you. Because there’s nothing morbid in it.

In fact, it’s a profoundly liberating thought.

Because when you see life this way, presence is no longer something you try to practice.

It simply arises on its own.

And then you experience every moment fully.

Of course, living this way isn’t easy.

Responsibilities pull us forward, regrets drag us back, and the mind loves its time travel.

Bills, deadlines, worries all feed the constant chatter in our mind.

Michael Singer, in The Untethered Soul, describes this chatter as a relentless roommate who never stops talking—commenting, analyzing, creating problems where none exist.

But if a situation can be changed, we act.

If it can’t, why keep looping through it in thought?

The voice only keeps us spinning, disconnected from life as it actually is.

So maybe the truth I was chasing was never in the mind at all.

Maybe it was here, in the living of the moment itself.

I've realized something profound, yet simple.

The moments when I am fully present, I don't question what is truth and what's not.

The seeking stops and the arguing ceases.

Think about your best memory.

Close your eyes and go there now.

You weren't questioning what life was about in those moments, were you?

You were too busy living it.

Too immersed in the experience of being alive.

Now I'm not saying every moment will be as peaceful or loving as those peak experiences.

Sometimes presence means sitting with discomfort, with boredom, with the ordinary.

But what if it’s precisely in facing the ordinary that the deepest joy reveals itself?

What if just by being more present—by stepping out of the endless commentary of your mind for a single breath—you could have each moment be complete in itself?

You just are.

And maybe that's the only truth there ever was.