Stop Rewinding the Tape: This is the Moment We’ve Been Waiting For!

I watched Meet the Coopers last night. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s a quasi Christmas movie with Diane Keaton and John Goodman, a couple reevaluating their long term marriage and dysfunctional family dynamics. (Not a great movie but not awful either.) At one point, Goodman delivered a line that hit me right in the gut: he wondered, as he reflected on a happy memory when his kids were little, if knew he was happy in that moment, in real time, as it was happening.

That’s the kind of thought that makes you pause mid-coffee and whisper, “Oh hell… ”

Because somewhere in our forties, fifties, sixties — whenever it happens — we start playing emotional archeologist. Digging up every old moment like it might contain the secret password to the meaning of life!

I was so happy then! I miss those moments!
Basically, we turn into our own museum curators… except we’re not dead yet.

Here’s the truth no one told us when we were younger (probably because we were too busy raising kids, building careers, or running around like overworked crazies!

The past is lovely. The past is rich. But the past is not where the magic is anymore.
The magic is right now — if you actually show up for it.

Gratitude Without Handcuffs

We’re allowed to look back with gratitude — of course we are.
We earned those memories. Every laugh line, every heartbreak, every late-night kitchen dance, every loss we crawled out of.

But there’s a difference between gratitude and attachment.

Gratitude is soft.
Attachment is a chokehold.

Gratitude says:
“I’m glad I lived that.”

Attachment says:
“Nothing will ever be that good again, so let me keep rewinding the same scene because that’s all I have.”

And honey, no. We’re not doing that anymore.
We did not make it this far just to become spectators of our past lives.

We Lived All Our Lives for This Moment

Think about it:
All that growth.
All that heartbreak.
All that experience.
All that surviving, reinventing, pivoting, learning what we will and will NOT tolerate…

It was training.

Not punishment.
Not decline.
Not “the beginning of the end.”

It was training.

For this stage.
This version of ourselves.
This chapter where we finally — finally — have the freedom, the clarity, the audacity and the self-respect to actually enjoy the damn moment.

This Is Your “Did I Know I Was Happy?” Moment — So Know It

So here’s the challenge this week:
Stop being the narrator of your life and start being the lead.
Look around.
Is this moment perfect? Absolutely not.
But perfect has never been the point.

Ask instead:
Is there something good here — right now — that I’m allowed to claim?

A quiet morning.
A warm drink.
A friend who texts back.
A bartender who remembers your name.
The thrill of trying something new.
The peace of not caring what anyone thinks anymore.
The old broad magic of saying yes to yourself.

Know you’re happy while it’s happening.
Even if it’s small.

Especially if it’s small.

Because these aren’t the scraps of your life —
This IS your life. And you’re in the good part.