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Missing Moments


Field of Dreams is one of my all-time favorite movies and as I have aged, it has become even more special to me. My favorite character in that movie is Archie “Moonlight” Graham, an aspiring baseball player who gives up his dream of a major league career to become a physician. In a conversation with the main character in the movie, Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner), Dr. Graham recounts the single inning he played in major leagues, lamenting he never got a chance to bat. He then makes a statement that will stick with me forever, “We just don't recognize the most significant moments of our life while they're happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there'll be other days.’ I didn't realize that that was the only day.”

“That was the only day.” Wow, how simple yet profound! Life seems to speed by at an ever-increasing rate and it’s so easy to be overwhelmed or just side-tracked by the pace and we neglect those precious moments that we will never get back.

Life is so precious and fragile; we can’t afford to be so focused on the big things tomorrow that we miss the opportunities to treasure today. I don’t want to look back at my life at all the things I could have done, the things I should have said, and think, “That was the only day.”  I must learn to treasure the moments I am given as they happen.

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