City Year requires that we do a speech to the corps sometime during the year, here’s the transcript of mine for all of you to peruse and enjoy.
If you could, take a moment and pay attention. Not to me, but to the world around you. Feel the chair underneath you, the texture of your toes against your boots. Hear the sound of papers rustling, take a deep breath and smell the air of the room. Live in this moment fully.
Now, what does this have to do with anything? See, a while ago I made a conscious decision about how I was going to live my life. I guess I got tired of waiting. Waiting for my shift to be over, waiting for my stop on the bus, waiting for distant goals that never seemed to mean that much when they finally arrived. I realized that all that time I spent just waiting was time I was wasting.
The way I see it, every moment has potential. Your life is made up of moments and if you only spend your time experiencing some of them, only paying attention to the ones you think matter, then there is so much that you’re missing out on.
Life, the real world, is now. It’s not around the corner, it’s not waiting start at graduation. It is in every moment that you are currently experiencing. And if you aren’t paying attention, if you aren’t taking ownership of your experiences, you aren’t living. You’re surviving.
Survival is easy. It’s going with the flow waiting for that big break to fall in your lap. It’s complaining, rather than acting. It’s dreaming big and then never following through. And I’m just as guilty of it as anyone else.
But I know that if I give in to that ease, if I let myself get comfortable with surviving, I’ll never leave. I’ll go with the flow until I look back on my life and realize that I haven’t accomplished anything that I wanted to.
So I force myself to not be complacent. I juggle on the street so that strangers talk to me. I volunteer for everything. I cultivate a thousand and one utterly random interests and track down cool events to do even if it means that I have to go by myself. But more importantly, I try to pay attention. Whenever I feel myself start to float I look closer. There is so much every where you go and I’ve found that everything is interesting if you just stop and examine it.
I take pleasure in simple things, like spinny chairs. I write descriptions of people on the bus and read the signs and posters I pass. I look for unusual things and if I see something I stop and check it out, even if, -no, especially if- it means altering my course.
I do everything I can to live in the moment. And don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean not planning on the future, it just means not counting on it to make everything better. If you’re not happy now, work to change it. Take ownership of your life and your experiences and avoid being a passive observer in your own story.
My mother has a saying: we make our own happiness. I believe that. I also believe that we are at our most unhappy not when times are tough or when we struggle but when we shut down our minds, close our hearts, and care no more about what is happening around us than a rock cares about the sun.
So if you only hear one thing, only remember one piece of this speech, remember this: You don’t know what the future holds. All you know, all that you have, is this moment. So act on it, make it what you will.
And pay attention.