About two weeks ago, country singer Brad Paisley released a new song and music video titled "Today." On his facebook page, he wrote that he hoped the video and song would be special to anyone who watched or listened because the concept of the video isn't something we think about.
The video shows clips of moments in people's lives, including his own, that are moments we never forget. The clips remind us just how beautiful this life is. Some scenes in the video include wedding proposals, soldiers coming home to their families, graduations, and the announcements of new babies, among other things.
When you get caught up in the day to day routine of life, it can be very easy to forget just how special events and moments can be. When we have a "Today" like the song says, it is something beautiful that God gives us to remind us how blessed we are. It is to show us that even when things seem to get boring and repetitive, there are these little moments in life that show us how wonderful this life is.
These are moments that take our breath away.
In college, I think I can speak for most of us when I say how we can easily take everyday moments for granted simply because we are focused so intently on planning for tomorrow.
We make lists, plan and replan, organize and reorganize. Not just for tomorrow, but the next week, the next month, and the next year. A lot of us are thinking so far past our college years that we forget just how magical this time in our life actually is. We have gotten ourselves so involved in thinking about our lives after college that it becomes easy to forget that the moments, the "today's" are happening right now.
We are so immersed in where our lives will be after college that we forget that this is the chapter before the rest of our lives.
We think that a lot of these moments will happen later; after college, and after this part of our story. We will only be this age, surrounded by these people and worrying about whatever it is we're worried about right now. We will only be worried about that test grade, that professor, and your plans for the weekend right now.
Only at this point in time will we be this free, this wild, and this focused on planning the next chapter of our lives.
One of the lyrics in the song says, "And the memory of a day like today, can get you through the rest of your life". As people, we are programmed to think that these special moments are the big moments; not necessarily moments that are small, and seem insignificant.
In reality, these moments we think are insignificant are the ones we remember and will remember when we're sitting on the couch, watching our grandchildren play on the floor around us.
So next your time your jamming out in your car, walking across your campus to class, having coffee with a friend, laying in bed bingeing Netflix, or the moment your standing in your school's football stadium, hearing your friends cheer for your team, take it in, because these are the "today's" too. The "today's" of this point of our lives might just be the ones that we think of fondly as some of the happiest times of our lives. The "today's" are happening all around us.
