Live in the moment!
Be your best self!
Embrace bread!
It’s been several years since Oprah retired from her “Be the Best You, You Can Be –Because I Sure As Hell Wouldn’t Wanna Be You” talk show. Among some of her more earth-shattering insights about life:
We need to live in the moment.
Not around or through the moment. Or even under-the-covers-nursing-a-glass-of-wine. But IN.
It should be noted that immediately after she made these comments, she gazed dramatically off the deck of her 50-foot yacht, The Big O, that was floating in the Mediterranean next to As You Wish, a 10-foot dinghy filled with butlers, which was surrounded by a flock of housekeepers and hairdressers on jet skies. And a forlorn Stedman treading water and wearing pink arm floaties.
Yet there is no doubt that over the years her “live in the moment” mantra has managed to transform millions of ordinary people’s lives.
Yes, it’s true! All of us — even butlers-in-dinghy-less and probes-in-butthole losers like you and me — can embrace every single bright and shiny effing moment of life because Oprah said we should.
All of us except for one 55-year-old woman named Marge from East Dingleberry, Maine. Baffling some of the world’s top Oprah experts, she has managed to live her entire life not in the moment at all. Not even once.
I sat down with Marge last week to get to the bottom of this mystery. And to ask her about her hometown’s name because, I mean, come on! That’s just ridic.
Me: Marge, I’ve been informed that you refuse to live in the moment. Why? Don’t you like Oprah? Is your yacht too small?
Marge: Look — I’ve tried okay! I just can’t do it! Last night, I wanted to live like Oprah, but I panicked from all the stress of my craptastic life. Then I frantically reached under my chair for a free gift, only there was nothing there! Just a huge goopy hairball my cat, Mr. Wankers, yorked up from the day before!
Me: Maybe this will help. Here’s a direct quote from Oprah: Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
Marge: …So I grabbed something to help clean up the mess and noticed it was the overdue electric bill.
Me: Here’s another Oprahism: The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail.
Marge [petting cat on her lap]: Then I started to cry, only I can’t produce any tears because I was diagnosed with chronically dry eye sockets. Why, just last week Mr. Wankers was diagnosed with excessive hairballs, sleep apnea and explosive flatulence. I wanted to weep when I saw the vet bill, but again, no tears! Do you know how painful it is to cry dust? Or what it’s like to be trapped in an apartment with a cat that’s farting swamp gas nonstop? Well, do you?
Mr. Wankers [breathing heavily]: Meow.
Me: Oprah says, The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.
Marge: In blind agony from my tearless crying, I grabbed the eye drops prescription I had to sell my left kidney to afford. But a couple of squirts in, I realized it was the sample size ghost pepper hot sauce my husband left on the kitchen counter next to all the other overdue bills.
Me: Turn your wounds into wisdom.
Marge: The hot sauce was all we had left to eat.
Me: You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.
Marge: Holy balls! I think those bastards just shut off my electricity! How will Mr. Wankers use his CPAP machine now? [tearless sobbing, wiping eyes] OH, IT BURNS! IT BURNS!
Mr. Wankers [farting nervously]: Meow.
Me: Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
Marge: Get out.
Me: What? But you’re not in the moment yet!
Marge: GET OUT!
Me: Hold on! I’m sensing you are almost in the actual moment now! This is a huge breakthrough! How do you feel? Are you angry? Do you feel rage? Feel it, don’t deny it! Live in the moment!
That’s when the interview abruptly ended. Oprah, you’ve done it again — Marge has learned to live in the moment! I’ll be sending your lawyers my hospital bill.
She's A Maineiac 
Ah. First.
Have you ever seen O magazine? Oprah’s face adorns the cover of EVERY ISSUE. Imagine the atom-bomb explosion if Oprah’s and Gwyneth’s narcissism collided.
Marge sounds familiar. Did you draw her from experience?
If Oprah Winfrey married Deepak Chopra she’s be Oprah Chopra. Heh.
Have I seen O magazine? I’m looking at it right now. Spoiler: She’s on the cover. My mom absolutely adores Oprah (thinks she should run for POTUS) and insists on giving me her magazines. And okay, I read them from cover to cover. How else can I find out how to order those diamond-encrusted teapot cozies?
Oprah Chopra. haha! Reminds me of David Letterman’s joke, “Uma, Oprah, Oprah, Uma.”
I think Oprah’s heart is in the right place but the decades of hero worship have rotted and warped her outlook on the world. Same with GP.
True. I really do like Oprah. And I believe in the power of now. Right now I’m praying the next few weeks speed up so this election will end.
Nooo – let them find some more hidden gems from Trump’s life first … so he’ll never be able to come back and haunt the US:
If only….
I now know why I never watched Oprah. I probably would have lived in the moment by punching my tv.
I’ve watched her show many times and I have to admit she helped me get into the power of now. Granted, my “now” was feeling extreme jealousy. But it’s a start.
Jealous of what?!?! Her money? She has no love in her life. You have an adoring husband and beautiful children. Things Oprah will never have.
You always know just what to say.
Of course, if you’d prefer to exchange all that love in you’re life for an army of sycophants and untold wealth, that’s another matter.
I’m going to live in the now by checking my lottery tickets. That’s where I will find my yacht.
Never be afraid to dream big. I tend to dream little. I’d settle for a tiny row boat with one oar.
Both kinds of dreams are OK. And if I’m going to dream big, it would be to save the world, end hunger, and see Donald Trump look like the guy at the end of Indiana Trump and the Last Crusade.
Not park my butt on a big boat!
Besides, I already have a kayak.
When it comes to Trump, (I can’t believe I am going to use this phrase but here goes..) I can’t even. I CAN’T EVEN!!!
Me neither.
You should hear my mom rant about him every morning after the latest scandal. Jeezum Crows flying all over the place.
You should do a vlog I do love your mother!
Oh my god that would be just so, so SOOOO funny. She would never let me record her, though.
Bummer!
I am with Marge–but I would not hurt you as I think your heart is in the right place now, and in the future–I am not so sure about the past. I read and watch Oprah–I like her, but too much money has made her go in technical terms: woo woo.
Honestly, I do like her, too. Along with Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, etc.I agree with their beliefs about living in the moment. Still, I can’t help finding it funny because it’s so easy for them to tell everyone else to “let things go”, when they have millions of dollars in the bank.
exactly. Just let them have to make lunches and grocery lists and get the garbage out, plus a thousand other things and work too!
Funny piece. I used to watch Oprah in the 80s, but stopped watching entirely when she declared on one of her shows that no human should have artificial flowers in their home, only real ones. I grew up poor – those were the only kind of flowers you could have in your rented shack/apartment, if you wanted flowers. It just struck me as arrogant and disconnected. Those magazines are meta-weird.
I read her magazine articles on “bargains” and I never knew a pair of kitchen tongs that cost 350 bucks was a good buy.
I’m living in the moment, and that moment involves snorting coffee through my nose at this post, so thanks for the delightful wake up experience.
Besides from your post, Miss Darla, I’m not enjoying living in this particular moment as it really stinks. Do you think Oprah would be OK if I lived in a different moment? I’m thinking Tuesday, May 5th,1969 at 7:35pm. That’s the moment I won first place in the grade school talent show with my ventriloquist dummy, Danny O’Day, Critics said of my performance, “You can barely see her lips move! primarily because she was on the stage, half the length of the gym away from the audience.”
Most of the moments since then have been a suck-fest rolling downhill.
“Besides your post” or “aside from your post.” Geesh, that coffee-nose-snorting experience must have affected my brain.
y’know, to hear that this post made you snort coffee makes my moment right now the single best moment I’ve had all day. I live to make you snort, Pegoliciousness.
Let’s see… I KNOW I must have a moment I’d like to relive….hmmm….there’s got to be something…..Oh yeah! That moment a few minutes ago when I read about your Danny O’Day moment. Good stuff.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but after careful analysis, I’ve come to the conclusion that Marge and Oprah are the same person. It all fits. Do with this information what you will, but remember what Oprah said to me the first time I met her: “What are you doing in my b-athroom?”
That does make total sense! I’m also leaning toward the idea that Stedman isn’t really a human being at all but a life-sized cardboard cut out.
Laughter is the best way of getting us into the moment, and I was in the moment word-for-word through this post, Darla. Although Mr. Wanker’s “explosive flatulence” did cause me to drift in and out of consciousness a little…
Mr. Wankers has that effect on people, the poor little guy. But now that I think about it…I suppose saying flatulence is “explosive” is a little redundant…Still, Explosive Flatulence would make a great name for my son’s future garage band.
YES! He could sell tickets on TP squares!
Jack Handey has a Deep Thought where he visits a friend in an insane asylum and the friend thinks he’s on a tropical island enjoying the sun, but Jack does him the favor of spending hours convincing him that he’s actually stuck in a psychiatric ward.
Classic. I miss Jack Handey. Funny, when I was writing the first three lines of this post, another skit came to mind, Stuart Smalley. “I am an attractive person. I am fun to be with.”
I’ll admit to doing an affirmation from time to time and I’ve got to acknowledge Stuart Smalley as my inspiration.
Every time I look in the mirror I say, “you’re smart enough, you’re good enough, and doggone it, people like you”
Poor Mr. Wankers. Sounds like he’s got some problems.
Not the least of which is his name.
I think I might know this Marge lady. Or maybe it was another sad sack just like her that I used to have to call for work. I’d be like, “Ma’am, your pills are ready at the pharmacy. Yep, that’s it. I don’t really need to know about Mr Wankers or your utility bill…”
But what if Mr. Wankers suffered an epic hacking-gasping-farting fit?
“Then I started to cry, only I can’t produce any tears because I was diagnosed with chronically dry eye sockets.” For some reason, when I read this, it made me think of a comment a cashier made to me just a few hours ago about our upcoming weather. She said that a super typhoon was on the way. I corrected her, saying that we weren’t getting a super typhoon, but rather the remnants of a typhoon (after it travelled all the way across the Pacific Ocean). It made me think of people who grab onto bits and pieces of info and have some of it right, but not quite all of it- spouting something that sounds sensational. Although, if a person has dry eyes, the issue probably does come from their eye sockets. Never mind.
I don’t know why, but when I wrote “eye sockets” it made me laugh so hard. It just sounds funnier than “chronically dry eyeballs”.
For sure! Hilarious!!
I don’t know, but dry eyeballs can be a fit funny as well.
I’m more concerned with what happens when I live in the moment, then the moment ends in a moment, as all moments are prone to do. What happens then? Do I need to find another moment, and quickly move my life to that next moment? Then to next one? Because that just be moving in and out of moments, and anyone who had to move from one apartment to another knows moving is a painful and time-consuming process.
yeah! I mean, how do we know we’re living in the moment, because if we stopped to observe we’re living in the moment, well, we are no longer living in the moment.
How do you know when that moment is over and it is time go to the next moment?
The only thing that comes close to the hilariousness of the moments spent reading this post were the ones spent reading the comments. I ❤ you, Darla! You make me laugh so dang hard! (However, I will not admit to snorting my morning Joe). ~ C
Aw, thanks for you comment, it made my day. That’s a good moment to live in. Have a good weekend!
This is hysterical. I love these motivational slugs. Someone should try stringing them all together…
You can be anything you want to be in the moment as long as you do one thing every day that scares you into being the change you want to see in the world.
And all I did was type in google search “annoying Oprah quotes” and bam, they all popped up strung together like that. My post basically wrote itself.
How on earth can you tell that a cat has sleep apnea?! I couldn’t believe it when I was diagnosed, but I can tell now. If I fall asleep in what resembles an upright position, it won’t be long before my lungs are yelling me to breathe, with a huge snort, which jumpstarts my breathing, and causes me to lift my head suddenly, with that huge snort, then nervously looking around, if I’m out in public, like the doctors office or the library. Believe me! People do look when you let out a big snort, and do it again and again, until I start moving around, doing something that keeps my hands or mind busy. And the chronic dry eye thing? I have to carry eye drops with me wherever I go because the doctor stopped the other med, which my mind is currently refusing to bring forward, to the front of my brain, sometimes to return much later in the day, when it’s totally useless.
I don’t know about cats, but my husband suffers from sleep apnea and dry eyes, so I just had to get these jabs in at his expense.
I have the sleep apnea and chronic dry eyes, too.
I’ve been to all kinds of places in Maine but don’t recall a place called dingleberry. LOL. Let’s send oprah there! without the butlers!!
Hells yeah!
Living in the moment is SOOOOO last millennium. We’ve moved on from that now Darla. Instead of living in the moment, the moment now lives in us. It’s the future I tell you!..or the now…it’s the now I tell you!
True. I think….? my brain just exploded.
I’ve been living every moment tweeting about Trump lately!! I can’t stop myself, he cannot win! So you can kind of say that I’m living in the moment he speaks, by tweeting immediately after? Does that count? Anyway, i hope to live more in the minute once the elections are over! 😍
Ah, yes, the Trump Factor plays a big part in my ability to live in the moment. It’s pretty friggin hard when all I can do is worry about next Tuesday. Or more like Wednesday morning when I wake up to see Clinton won– and Trump is going to sue her and sue the voters and sue the media for losing.
Are you talking about this moment or this moment? See? They keep slipping into another moment. *sigh* I can’t keep up with them.
Well, I was completely in the moment when I read your comment about moments. Does that count?
Hi Darla, your posts always make me laugh! I hope you do find something wonderful under your chair today, perhaps a chocolate bar? (Not sure what else would be great to find under a chair, but now you’ve got me thinking.)
Hey, Melissa!! 🙂 How are you? Good to see you again. And yes, chocolate under my chair is always a good thing…unless my daughter put it there a few years ago and it’s now covered with cat fur…
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