Have you ever had the experience where you walk into a movie theatre and then, when you walk out two hours later, you’re transformed in some deep way? That’s what happened when I saw the movie, Boyhood.

An unusual project by director Richard Linklater, it was created over a period of twelve years and follows the life of Mason as he grows from a boy to an adult. The film shows how life, in its small, everyday moments, is a process of co-creation.
 

 
At the end of the movie, one of the characters says to the boy Mason, now 18,

“You know how everyone says to seize the moment? I’m kind of thinking it’s the other way around – the moment seizes us.” And Mason says, “Yeah. It’s constant, the moments. It’s always right now.”

I thought this movie was beautiful. The ending stayed with me and inspired this post about letting the moment transform us. This idea may seem passive and in opposition to the popular cliche, to “seize the day.” Yet, both are at play here. We seize the moment and we let the moment seize us. It’s a relationship.

We’re constantly bumping into life through our environment and the people we encounter; through the society and culture we inhabit.
 

 
Culture, like everything else, is constantly changing, although some parts slower than others. While culture is useful as an organizing principle, it can be limiting if too fixed. It can too strictly define what is socially acceptable and create boxes that limit possibilities.

Our current culture encourages us to take charge of our lives – be the change, seize the moment, live our best lives. Yet, this mindset can be self-defeating when it doesn’t take into account the flip side – that we have little control. We are acted on by other forces and can easily be deflated when our best laid plans or intentions don’t come to fruition the way we expected.
 

This where the contemplative habit of openness comes in, being open to the moment.

 

 
If we are open, we expect surprises.

We are resilient when unexpected circumstances arise.

We let go of outcomes and choose how our experiences will change us.

In other words, as Amy Poehler advises in her bestselling book, Yes Please, we have to “surf our life.”

Our most transformative moments or experiences come unexpectedly.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since. The question she carried struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. ~ Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost via BrainPickings

 

Photography as Encounter

 
The photographer’s role in “creating” an image is usually emphasized, but I see the process as an encounter. The photographer brings to the image all of his or her previous experiences, memories, thoughts. Something in the environment catches his or her attention and there is resonance. The photograph comes from this moment of resonance or connection and the photographer (and hopefully, the viewer) is transformed by the experience.

Patricia Turner delves into this idea of receiving a picture rather than taking it in this post.

All week I saw signs of this theme of being transformed.

* Tara Mohr talks about how the life-changing experience of motherhood is rewriting her. There are many life-changing experiences that do this – some chosen and some not. Education rewrites us. A serious illness rewrites us. Marriage rewrites us. Living in a new place rewrites us. Books rewrite us. And, for sure, parenthood rewrites us.

* I saw this succinct Vince Lombardi quote (to your right) in a store window.

* Marie Forleo continues the message in her audaciously contemplative way when she says to,

“Bring your A-game – your attention, enthusiasm, love to each moment, no matter where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re doing. Make is-ness your business. Engage fully with the moment (put a ring on it).”

Sometimes, it seems like we have no control, that life is transforming us in ways that are overwhelming. Yet, we always have a choice in how to respond. It’s often the smallest moments that change us in the best and biggest ways. When I went to see the movie, Boyhood, I had no idea that I would be transformed.

How have you been transformed recently?