When you're surfing you're not thinking about where you parked the car or what you're going to do when you grow up or what you're going to buy when you've got lots of money. You know, you're just there. You're in the moment. And I think in a contemporary world, that's a rare privilege.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of being present and enjoying the moment.
Tim Winton's quote highlights the beauty of living in the present, especially while engaged in activities like surfing, where one's mind clears of all distractions and worries about the future. In today's fast-paced society, finding moments of pure presence is becoming increasingly rare, and Winton suggests that embracing these fleeting instances is a valuable privilege.
In practice
During a motivational speech about mindfulness and being present.
I don't believe there's anything cosmic or divine or morally superior about whales and dolphins or sharks or trees, but I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these extraordinary phenomena, and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help.
I just sit here and tell the story as though I can't help it. There's always something in the day that reminds me, that sets me off all hot and guilty and scared and rambling and wistful, like I am now.
The night is full of stories. They float up like miasmas, as though the dead leave their dreams in the earth where you bury them, only to have them rise to meet you in sleep. Mostly the scenes are familiar, but sometimes everything is strange, the people unknown.
Hunting and gathering are in my blood. But I've lived long enough to witness a diminution in the seas, and to notice a fragility where once I saw - or assumed - an endless bounty.
It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one.
I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.
I've never been more confused in my life, but at the same time I've never been more satisfied with what we've done.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.
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