“Live in the moment” is one of those phrases I’ve heard so many times that I’ve almost stopped listening to it. I like to think I’m pretty good at it, but deep down, I know I’m not always. I didn’t really understand what it meant until this past Friday, when I accidentally experienced it for myself.
I’ll admit I almost spent my entire Friday in bed. It was gross, muggy, and rainy outside, and I woke up feeling pretty lousy with absolutely no motivation to do anything. I had a morning class that I actually enjoy going to, but I was so down that I seriously considered skipping it. Unfortunately, my anxiety about losing points for missing class is stronger than my will to stay in bed, so I forced myself to go.
Later that day, I met up with a friend for lunch. She was looking at her phone, clearly frustrated, so I asked what was going on. She told me she had been trying to sell her Austin City Limits Music Festival tickets all morning, but no one was actually committing. She kept getting empty promises from people who said they were interested and then disappeared.
feeling bad, I started brainstorming ways to get rid of them. I jokingly suggested that we could just go down to the festival grounds and try to sell them in person. Then I had a thought: What if I went down there too, got a ticket, and we just … went to the festival?
The idea immediately snapped me out of whatever fog I had been in all day. That morning, I had barely wanted to leave my bed. Now, I was sitting at lunch thinking about going to ACL, and for once, I didn’t overthink it.
I pulled out my phone and bought a day pass.
Mind you, I already had tickets to the festival for the following weekend. Apparently, one ACL weekend wasn’t enough for me.
And here we are. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and we’ve decided we’re going to take on a very muddy, very rainy ACL Festival. We head back to my apartment, and I throw on my white oversized Björk T-shirt, a random black skirt I found buried in the depths of my closet, and some brown Frye boot dupes from Walmart that were definitely not intended for a muddy music festival but were, unfortunately, the best option I had. It was not exactly the outfit I would have put together if I had planned this trip in advance, but somehow it felt perfect for the chaos we were about to endure. I grab my wallet, head over to her apartment so she can change too, and we’re on our way.
To say this little adventure was anything less than chaotic would be an understatement.
First, meet up with a random man at his hotel to get the wristband? Check. Buy rain ponchos, only to realize every store within a reasonable distance is completely sold out? Check. Take a 45-minute walk to the festival grounds in the pouring rain because the bus is nowhere in sight? Check, check, check.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my student ID, and for a good portion of the walk, I’m not even sure we’re going the right way. Our phones are at 30%, it starts raining again, and at this point, it feels like everything is seconds away from completely falling apart. But somehow, we make it.
And man, did we have a time.
Running through the festival grounds in my T-shirt, with smudged mascara, and knotted hair, was probably the best I’ve felt about myself in awhile because, for once, it just wasn’t about that. I wasn’t thinking about whether my makeup had stayed intact or if my outfit was cute enough to get a good picture. I wasn’t checking my phone every five minutes or thinking about what I was going to post later. I wasn’t even really thinking about myself at all.
I was just there taking it all in.
I think what surprised me most was realizing how often I’m actually thinking about the moment from the outside. Because even when I’m having fun, there’s usually a tiny part of my brain thinking about the picture I should take, the video I should be recording, or how I’m going to remember the night later. I’m experiencing something, but I’m also thinking about how I’m going to remember it or how it might look to someone else. This night was different.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t even supposed to happen. I almost stayed in bed that morning, my friend almost spent the day trying to sell her ticket, and by the time we actually made it into the festival, so much had already gone wrong. But somehow, that made it better. There was nothing to live up to. No expectations. No perfect version of the night that we were trying to create.
It was just us, figuring it out as we went.
And maybe that’s what “living in the moment” actually means. Not having the perfect day or being completely present every second of your life. Maybe it’s just allowing yourself to forget about everything else for a little while. To stop worrying about how something looks and actually pay attention to how it feels.
And weirdly, those are the moments I want to remember.
Not the ones that looked the best. The ones that actually felt like living.