Living in the Moment: Finding Beauty in the Mundane

I used to take delight in capturing photographs of majestic mountains, juxtaposed against a foreground of evergreen trees with a backdrop of deep blue skies. I would take hikes in the North Cascades in the summertime, intent on capturing the unique beauty I am afforded only a few hours from my home.

One of the last hikes I remember taking was a sunset hike up Sauk Mountain, a little ways east of where I live. It was a sunset hike in June of 2025. The hike itself is 4.2 miles round trip and consists of a series of switchbacks that are pretty exposed throughout, affording you glorious views of the valley below and imbrications of hills and mountains stretching out to the horizon. I hadn't brought a camera that evening, but I snapped several shots with my smartphone.

The hike is fairly straight forward — I had done it several times before — and it should have been pretty easy, but I slipped on some snow and hyperextended my knee about halfway up the mountain. The hyperextension led to a Baker cyst behind my knee, and the injury took me out of commission for at least a month as I recall.

I had to slow down, and the slowing down meant recognizing the beauty I hadn't always noticed.

At one point, at the height of COVID, when nobody was traveling, I created a silly postcard of my kitchen and sent it to some of my friends and family as a sort of commentary on how restrictive life had become.

The photo was just a silly photo, but it had made me kind of consider the view out my kitchen window. I began to take notice and appreciate the way the sunlight came through and highlight the surfaces of the counter and walls of my kitchen during certain times of the day. My kitchen, to a small extent, became a fascination to me as I captured different scenes here and there throughout the next several months.

As I captured images here and there a thought crossed my mind: How much of life do we miss ruminating about the past or worrying about the future, all while the present moment beckons for our attention? I am especially guilty of ruminating on the past. At any idle moment throughout any given day, my mind has a tendency to descend upon some event from my past that causes a pang of pain and regret.

With regard to the past, the following quote comes to mind:

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The same is true of the future. I will, on occasion, consider the future and meet the thought with a sense of dread and anxiety. I've observed that life becomes rich when I live it with intention and chose to experience the moment I am occupying at the time, rather than be troubled by the past or the future.

Observing the sunlight come through my kitchen window — and really meeting the moment intentionally — the sun itself seems to be embracing the objects it illuminates, and that embrace gives rise to a poignant mental image: that of the universe stating plainly, "You belong here. This moment you are experiencing right now was ordained before time began. This day you are experiencing was 13.7 billion years in the making. You are meant to be experiencing this moment."

There's a movie that was released in 2009 called A Single Man. The movie follows George Falconer, a man living what he believes to be his last day on earth: Friday, November 30, 1962. Living this particular day as if it is his last, he carries himself with a certain carefree, transparent, uniquely authentic demeanor. He approaches interactions with others with an air of almost gentle reverence. Throughout this day, George also carries within him a deep, penetrating sorrow; for he has lost someone immeasurably dear to him. Many of the thoughts that course through George's mind on this day are ruminations on the person he has lost. It is only toward the end of the film that George encounters a very poignant realization that jostles him out of his self-reflective sorrow and into the present moment...

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be. ~ George Falconer, A Single Man

I'm struggling with how to articulate just what brings him into the present moment, except to say that his self-pity transforms into a tender empathy for a fellow human being who is, himself, in the midst of an existential struggle.

This past March, I was afforded an opportunity to visit Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada with a few close friends. Having recovered from the injury I sustained the previous year, I again took to the trails... taking pictures along the way.

I cannot say my trip was completely free of rumination, but I do recall one instance of intentional presence. At the onset of one of the hikes we went on, I was perhaps ten or twenty feet ahead of my companions. The sun was shining high in the sky, causing the entire area to glow with deep oranges and reds. I took notice of the rockface just to the right of the trail we were about to traverse. Just as the sun was "embracing" this ancient rock, so I too was compelled to put my hand on its warm surface and recognize its existence. "You belong here...", was the thought that naturally came to my mind as my hand touched the surface of the stone: a veneration of the rock edifice...

I paused a moment or two...

"...and so do I." was the completion of the expression my mind felt compelled to silently express... and for a few brief moments, I felt held by the universe, and felt its joy at my existence.