I have thought about ‘moments’ a lot over the years. Mostly I have focused
on the arrival of a moment, when something happens that demands you
make a decision about how to respond. That moment when you must
choose an ethical or moral path.

For example, a friend wrote recently about taking dance lessons.
There was a moment in the first group lesson where one of the other
students was about to be left out of an activity. People had paired up and
my friend could see this young woman, shy and nervous, wasn’t going
to be included. Nobody’s fault, no evil intentions, just how it played out.
The girl was shrugging her shoulders at the teacher’s encouragement.
My friend had a moment. A moment to decide which direction she would
go. She chose to lightly slap the girl on the arm and say ‘Hey, let’s just go for it’
and the lonely student, the teacher and my friend did the routine together
and had fun. That was all it took.

It’s a simple moment in which you decide to be kind, to be loving, to be forgiving.
It’s that moment when you know you are creating your character and you
create it. Then you smile at yourself for doing the good thing and look for
the next moment with joy.