Enjoy the Moment. Time Is Going Fast.

Three years before my daughter Leisha would graduate from high school, I scribbled a note on a scrap of paper and propped it up by my computer where I’d see it every day.

Enjoy the moment. Time is going fast.

It was a reminder that she’d be leaving for college soon. And I knew that if I could just keep that thought close, it would help me appreciate her more — to let the little things go, to be more present, to soak up the ordinary moments before they quietly slipped away.

She’s been gone three years now — across the country at college in Arizona while we’re back home in Wisconsin. And that little note? It’s still there. Still needed.

Because it turns out this reminder isn’t just about parenting. It’s about all of it.

Right now it’s June. Summer is finally here — that glorious, fleeting season that arrives with such fanfare and disappears before I’m ready. And I already know it’s going to go by way too fast.

So I’m still looking at that note, still using the reminder to slow down and savor life. To sit on my front deck in the morning and just… be there. To pause in my garden and marvel at how the tiniest seed becomes something extraordinary. To notice how Mother Nature bursts back to life after a long Wisconsin winter — that particular shade of green that only exists in early summer. To wonder at the remarkable balance of all things that makes life on this planet possible. To appreciate this body of mine — what it does, how it heals, how it carries me through every single day without being asked.

The seasons of the year pass quickly. But so do the seasons of our lives. And the moments worth savoring rarely announce themselves. They just slip by while we’re busy and distracted and somewhere else in our heads.

Do you need a note you can see every day to remind you? Or what other practices help you savor this extraordinary life?