Emma Jarrett - In This Moment

It has been a while.   Life has been colourful - to put it mildly.   I seem to be out the other side with a clarity about what truly matters to me.   Hence renaming this blog, In This Moment. We are right here in it, after all. And hello to you as you choose to spend this moment of yours reading my words. Hello! Take a breath and settle in, if you choose to stay. It’s your moment of choice. It has taken a humbling tussle with cancer to open my eyes to the moment I am in. Moments which can be a few seconds; a fleeting interaction, a happy thought. Or periods of time delineated by some external structure; a work day, a treatment schedule or a plane trip. And then moments as life stages; mothering a newborn, high school education, a career, even dying well as you acknowledge your last days. All these hold a context for the minuscule moment which is accompanied by my next breath in and subsequent release.   How am I going to spend this moment that I am present to?

January 2015 saw me completing my 50 th  year and launched me into what I am blithely calling My Next 50.   I fully realize that I have very little control over how many more I will live, but let’s just say my plan involves 5 more decades. But how do you plan for that?! I marvel at all the elements that went into those first 50 years; the growing, the learning, the family and friends, the books and music, the world events and cultural shifts that have accompanied and influenced me. But most of all I marvel at all  the choices . The choices that I felt encouraged to take or was discouraged from taking are truly what have added up to me being the person I am, with the community, the friends, the children, the memories and the plans that I have. It’s pretty mind-blowing when I think about how this all accumulated and I feel filled with gratitude and awe. But what about all those plans? How do I now plan another 5 decades? How do I ensure those plans will be given the best c

You are the result of every decision you’ve made. An obvious, but much avoided, truth made so poignantly vivid by Jeremiah McDonald to his 12 year old self here . There are so many inspired moments within this short video, but my favourite has to be at 3’20” where Jeremiah makes a decision, having woken-up to himself. The fire is re-lit inside him, he’s back on purpose and nothing else matters but pursuing his passion; “what he does”. And he takes action.   Ahh, is there anything better in life? Is there anything more worthy of celebration than witnessing (or being) a person acting on their deep recollection of themselves? Decide to spend your next 4 minutes watching this delightfully clever and funny creation or abandon reading this post now.   You’d be “wasting your time” trying to make sense of it, if you don’t.   And I’d hate to be blamed for that ;) So, what do you do exactly? What did you do before you decided not to?   What were you doing “before you made this video”? At whateve

I saw this remarkable woman in the live West End production of Children of a Lesser God many years ago and she still amazes me. Little did I know then that I would become the proud mother of my very own daughter with a hearing loss.  My hope is that Evelyn becomes an inspiration to Freya too. From a professional perspective, as one who teaches observation and "listening" in all its guises, this piece particularly caught my eye. At 5'38" Ms Glennie gives a most wonderful physical and musical demonstration of the difference between using a lot of effort to "make" a connection to her instrument and music, and then simply not using that effort - the difference is immediately obvious. THIS is part of what I mean by more success for less effort .   Check it out! http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html Emma Jarrett, ITM emmasjarrett@gmail.com www.emmajarrett.ca 1-250-992-7634