It was one of those golden moments, unplanned and unanticipated.</p><p>Sunday morning, lying on a window seat in the kitchen, snuggling with my 4-year-old daughter, I found myself relaxed and satisfied with life.</p><p>Gone was the typical nagging worry about things that need to be done.</p><p>It was quiet except for the music softly wafting from the CD player.</p><p>As my little girl dozed off, I could feel the rhythm of her heartbeat on my chest. As I glanced out the window, my field of vision was filled with the vivid crimson and gold of early autumn leaves, reaching the peak of their spectacular beauty even as they performed their final, fluttering death dances to the ground.</p><p>In that moment I was seized with an almost overwhelming sense of spiritual fulfillment.</p><p>And then it was gone, lost as soon as I became conscious of my reverie.</p><p>It was like when you wake from a pleasant dream and try to make yourself go back to sleep. The mere act of trying makes it impossible for you to go back to where you were.</p><p>My daughter was still sleeping, the music played and the leaves continued to fall, but I couldn&rsquo;t rediscover the nirvana I had just experienced.</p><p>Looking back on the moment reminded me of just how rare times like those really are and how much of our daily life is wasted with worry and struggle and commitment.</p><p>It takes the occasional golden moment to put those seemingly important day-to-day concerns in the proper perspective.</p><p>There were a dozen other things I shoulda coulda been doing that Sunday morning.</p><p>My gutters would have been cleaned or the dishes done, but then I would have lost the opportunity to feel, if only briefly, a blissful appreciation of the true blessings of life.</p><p>It may be overstatement to say that that singular moment has profoundly changed me. I don&rsquo;t know. Maybe next week I&rsquo;ll be back to my usual tense and fretful self.</p><p>But I do know that since then, I seem to have developed a greater interest in slowing down. I&rsquo;ve felt less anxious about tasks left undone and more concerned with watching clouds and sharing smiles with one of my daughters.</p><p>And I can&rsquo;t help but regret how much time I&rsquo;ve wasted not wasting time staring out windows and sharing a tender embrace with one of the greatest gifts I&rsquo;ve ever been fortunate enough to receive.</p><p>She will grow up and be gone from my home someday, but the memory of that moment we shared on a lazy Sunday morning in October will be with me forever.