The Power of Moments "Intro" (1/5)

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Tea with Tasoni. I'm Laura. And this week we're starting a new book called The Power of Moments. Now this is a fantastic book. I'm so excited to read it with you.

This is not a religious text, this is a self-help book, but I feel like there are so many wonderful things in this book that we can apply to growing our families to building our church service and even just to make everyday life a little more special.

I'm going to go through the book with you. This is the first week. So this is kind of an introduction, and we're going to go through the first--the book is broken up into different kinds of moments. And then at the beginning there's a little intro piece and that's where we're going to start today. So, if you're following along in the book, the chapters are called "Defining Moments" and "Thinking in Moments" (chapters one and two).

Okay. So first let's start talking about chapter one. So, the questions that are being answered in this are, What are moments? and Why are they important? We don't often think about our life in moments consciously. I mean, I think we all remember like special moments in our lives and things like that, but we don't think of them as something to be distinctly aware of. You know, we think of things as like general memories.

But actually our memories are the thoughts we have about a particular moment. So for example, when we were growing up our teachers would always say to us, Oh, we remember the moment when we found out that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And all the teachers love to talk about where they were and the moment when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

When the twin towers fell, we were all looking around at each other, students, and thinking, this is it. This is the moment that we are going to remember. We're going to know exactly where we were when we found out about this and how much change we're going to see in our nation afterwards, which I think we can all attest to looking around.

Thinking about your life in defining moments is it just a natural way of being.It's just not something we do consciously. And moments are important because they kind of provide milestones or markers to our life. When we look back at our life, we're not going to remember every single thing that happened, but we're going to remember special peak moments that made an impact on us.

Now the other question that I think going into this book is can moments be engineered? Can they be made up? Can we manipulate a situation to create that kind of moment? And the answer, of course, in the book is yes, a resounding yes. Moments can and should be engineered.

They give so many great examples. The example they start with is with a school called YES Prep. I believe it's a charter school. And at YES Prep, they started doing something called Signing Day where all of their high school seniors walk across the stage and announce which college they're going to be attending the following year.

And this is a moment of such pride and excitement and is given so much attention that it feels a little bit like a football player signing onto an NFL team or basketball players signing with the NBA. They are trying to give academics the same weight--at least in a kind of ultra sensory way--as sports is given already.

So, they talk about how that moment is engineered. Someone came up with that idea, someone put the graduation, you know, or like the announcement ceremony together for Signing Day. Someone decided what the decor would be, what everybody would do and say, and so on. And so I think that's just such a beautiful example that yes, moments can be engineered.

And one of the rules for the moment that I feel like we really need to remember--I think it's just a basic rule that if this is the only thing that you take away from this whole book, it's going to change your life, and the way you create moments in your life. The rule is called the Peak-End rule.

Basically the idea is that you don't remember the entirety of an experience. You remember the peak, whether it's a good peak or a pit, like a bad peak of an experience, and you remember the very end, the note that you ended on.

So for example, if you went on vacation, and the peak moment was you got to see fireworks at like a really perfect time, and at the end you ended on a good note, you had like ice cream right before you left, you would have a positive view of that particular moment or that particular experience.

And vice versa. If the peak moment was a pit, like the airline loses your bags, right? And then, the end experience is that they charge you like a fee for finding your bags or something crazy like that. That would be a moment that you would overall characterize as terrible even if they had done everything else perfect. Even if they had served you the best food or like had been really, like the people on the plane, the attendants had been really nice, like none of that would matter because the pit was so deep, and the end was such a negative experience.

So the Peak-End Rule. And when Abouna and I were reading part of this book together, we thought about Divine Liturgy, how at the end you've got "Amen. Alleluia. Dzoxa Patri" and everyone gets really like hyped up at the end. And we were thinking like, Huh, I wonder if, as Liturgy was being put together, this was something that they thought about that like the end moment has to be strong, like end strong, you know?

And so I feel like ever since now when I think about it and I look around at all the kids at Divine Liturgy and I think about the end and how excited they get, and they know that after this they're going to get korban. Like it's, there's just something about it. Like the end is so strong and it leaves such a positive impression of Liturgy, even if they struggled some during the middle.

And I know for all of us, like we… I think I maybe wrote this in a blog post or something that like Liturgy with little kids is so hard, but then you get to the end and they're like singing along with the hymns at the end. And you can't believe that you survived and you're so exhilarated even though it was like a tough three hours. So this Peak-End rule…

There are four elements that they talk about going into each moment. They talk about it as elevation, insight, pride and connection. And my translation for that is elevation is something to boost the senses. Insight is a moment of understanding. Pride is an achievement, like you've a milestone, you've made it, and connection is some kind of social bond.

So I want you to ask yourself, in Divine Liturgy, how does the church put in elevation, insight, pride, and connection? Where is there social connection during Liturgy? Where is there elevation or boosts of the senses? Where can you find understanding and where is there a sense of achievement? Oka, so leave me a comment. Let me know what is something that in Divine Liturgy, um, fits this "moment creation" framework. Think about that.

Then. I really, I want to go back to this idea of things being engineered because I remember when I've talked to people about like Kwanzaa or Global Coptic Day. One of the gripes people have that I found so interesting was that it felt too engineered. And I remember that like, I remember thinking but everything is initially engineered. This kind of argument doesn't make sense to me. Tradition doesn't really happen unless someone gives it shape.

So for example, we have this tradition where we do Secret Santa as a family and then you open your gift and you try to guess who gave you that present. And then you go out, you stand up and you go and you give them, like a hug and a kiss, and you take a photo with them. Right?

And this is something that we started years ago, and we just kept doing it. And I had a camera, I was really into photography at the time, still am. And so I would take pictures of this event. And now people are like, why aren't you taking the picture? Now it's canon.

It's like Christmas canon that Laura has to take a picture of me with my Secret Santa. You know, it's like a thing that has to happen. So, it's so funny because I was like, who made up this rule that I have to take this picture? Well, of course, you know, we built that tradition together by doing it over and over.

I was thinking about rituals that the church might need to add (and this is something you can start thinking about). For example, I've heard a lot that women that suffer miscarriage don't have a sense of closure after. They have built up-- this child was alive and was very real to them and maybe more real than to the father. If they miscarry at one point, I've heard from women over and over that they need closure. They need some kind of ritual, some kind of healing, some kind of reassurance from the church that they didn't do anything wrong, that everything's okay, that the baby is in heaven.

You know, this kind of moment that is such a huge pit in someone's life and can be very traumatic needs some kind of support and encouragement and prayerfulness that we don't already have a ritual for. You know, we know what to pray when someone passes away, we know what to pray. When someone is sick, we know what to pray. If we confess, right? There's a prayer for all of these things and there are some things that we might need as a community to start building prayers for together to support ourselves in those little tiny moments.

Now to take it back to a lighter point, Disney for example, is very good at filling the pit of standing in line. Like, you know, they'll have like TVs that are playing things. They'll give you games or trivia. They'll have entertainers, people dressed up to meet and greet while you're waiting in line to go on a ride. They really try to take care of you. And so, it makes that line a little bit better.

And for example, now they have fastpass or they put an estimate: you have this long before you have to go or this long before you get on a ride, right? And so you can pace yourself. Okay, 10 minutes left… I can do this. I can hold on for 10 more minutes or however long it happens to be for your ride.

There's that story in the second chapter about the man who built the amazing MRI machine and he's so excited and he… it says he's a proud papa going in to see his machine that he built that's going to do such amazing things.

And then he realizes--he gets a chance. You have to read this. It's at the bottom of page 29 and goes to 30, 31, 32. He realizes--he sees it through the eyes of his patients who are children, and he sees how traumatic this kind of experience is. And so he goes back and re-envisions this machine through the eyes of a child.

And I think that's something that we lack a lot in our service where we don't take the time to see how what we're doing or what we're presenting looks from the perspective of the child. We'll present, we'll create this wonderful lesson that really shows off our skills but doesn't give the kids a chance to do anything. The kids are sitting there bored out of their minds and not given a chance to interact or not given a chance to give input because we are not looking at it through their eyes.

We're looking at it through our eyes, and we're very focused on that. And so one of the tips I always give is write your lesson from the perspective of the kids. This is something I learned in college. Go back and write, you know, first we're going to do this and this is what the kid is going to learn. And then we're going to do this. And the kid: this is what the kid is going to be doing or saying. Are they sitting? Are they standing? Right?

Write it from the perspective of the child, and you'll get a completely different roadmap and a completely different opinion of your own lesson than you might expect. So that's something to think about. So looking through the kids' eyes.

So I want you, again, don't forget at the bottom, let me know how does the Church add elevation, insight, pride, and connection to a Divine Liturgy. There are so many good points. Divine Liturgy is so rich and what we need to build wonderful moments together if only we're aware and we opened our eyes to it.

All right. I will talk to you next time when we will discuss elevation a little bit more. Remember that's the one about boosting your senses. If you don't have a copy of the book, you can pick it up at teawithtasoni.com. Take care and I'll talk to you next week.

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