Alas! How swift the moments fly!
How flash the years along!
Scarce here, yet gone already by, the burden of a song.
See childhood, youth and manhood pass
And age with furrowed brow,
Time was – Time shall be – drain the glass,
But where in time is now?
– John Quincy Adams,
"The Hour Glass"

They say that life comes down to a few great moments. Often the key points of our lives pass by with stealth, leaving us to chase at shadows.

We are left to question and evaluate the ebb and flow, the surges and phases of our existence. The times we felt lost. Times of love, sorrow, rebirth and injury. Events that made time stand on end. Events that made a minute seem like an hour and an hour seem like a week.

There are moments which impact us directly, voyeuristic moments we observe while they are acted out by others, and moments which we only deem as significant years after the fact.

Time flows like a river and we cannot hold off its effects for very long. Christ said, "What is your life? It is but vapor, which appears and then disappears suddenly," and "store your treasure in heaven."

In ancient times, Plato wrote, "An unexamined life is not worth living." I sometimes reflect upon the moments of my life that have come together brick by brick to shape the pyramid of my character.

One of the most prominent centers around a semi-crippled girl in my second grade class named Laura Jakes. Laura couldn't control her bladder. Every week or so, she'd urinate all over herself in front of everyone – helpless and blameless like a baby. Sometimes I remember wiping up her urine with brown paper towels while the other kids laughed and chanted, "Anthony and Laura sittin' in a tree." I often wonder if that was my very best moment.

Other moments are more fleeting. The good ones are like the shade of a giant oak tree on a scorching summer day. The bad ones hot and bitter like a dry prairie wind.

Just yesterday, an 11-year-old boy stood on the pitching mound during a Little League championship game. Bases loaded, two outs, his team leading 3-2. He strikes the hitter out to preserve the win, his teammates then swarm and mob him on the mound in a wild celebration.

In the midst of that ecstasy, I remember thinking, "There will be lots of days like this." But through the Sandy Koufax League, high school and college, there was never another baseball day that ever quite equaled that one. Is it any wonder so many Major League players still refer to their Little League accomplishments as the best of all baseball memories?

Perhaps the most emotionally charged moments come when the seeds of love are sown, only to vanish like the morning dew into that most magical of all places – the heart.

Most men carry a tale of the great women in their lives, or lament seeing a woman who caught his fancy – but then never approached her. Sometimes I think about the most beautiful women I have ever seen. In my high school, everyone was in love with a girl named Laura Murphy. But I secretly had a crush on Elaine Cuneen. But I never told her or anyone. At Texas A&M, a gal named Michelle Eddleman was considered to be the most beautiful gal on campus. But can anyone be truly beautiful unless they have an inner beauty of the soul? And can any person be truly ugly unless their heart and soul are dark on the inside?

When I was a student at Baylor, everyone was in love with a gal named Heather Cooper. (One of my journalism students shocked our class by claiming that he "would cut off his right arm just for the chance to date her!) I once talked with Heather and a Palestinian student came out of the blue and began yelling at me about a pro-Israel column I had written in the school newspaper. That was certainly a moment to rue because it has taken me about 18 months just to work up the nerve to speak to Miss Cooper.

I guess every man has some chagrin about the "one who got away," and wonders, "What if I had just said hello to that gal and asked her to have a cup of coffee - would it have changed my life?"

Another feature about time and space is our ability to fix the past by plowing our way through painful memories and then acting upon them.

For example, a few years ago I went to mail a package. Laying on the counter next to where I stood was a package being mailed to a certain Laura Jakes in Seattle. The return address was from a family member in our hometown. I copied down Laura's address and wrote her a letter. Like the character played by actor Kevin Bacon in the movie "Flatliners," I told Laura how sorry I was that we students at Our Lady of Perpetual Help should have been kinder to her and gone out of our way to make her feel a part of our class. I can still see her standing with the teacher in the schoolyard with the braces on her legs – while the rest of us ran around and played like wild Indians.

Laura wrote back to me and said she would never attend our school reunion. "I have nothing to say to those people," she wrote. But by punching a hole in time and space, at least Laura heard a kind word from one former classmate.

Other great moments come when we work and act to help others. I remember one summer when I was working as a lifeguard. A small boy about the age of three swallowed his tongue. I pressed on his temporal mandibular joint (both sides of his jaw) and forced open his teeth. I then pulled out his tongue and he coughed up the water and found new life. I remember another time, when, while studying at Texas A&M I pulled back a Chinese exchange student who was about to step out from the curb in front of a speeding truck. Sometimes I think about those two incidents and wonder how I was able to be aware and do the right thing in those moments.

Other important moments are more esoteric. I often recall feeling the presence of my guardian angel when I was a little boy. Then again I felt the power of another guardian angel back in 1996. Her name was Loretta Archer. She lived across the street from my family where I grew up in Lindenhurst, Long Island. Sadly, Loretta passed away after a battle with cancer in 1985. Loretta was very beautiful in her day, and she looked a lot like the Hollywood actress Minnie Driver.

Back in the fall of 1996. I was walking in Seoul, it was a nice afternoon and cooling down in early October. I was at the Seoul Station, which is the Red Line (there is also a Green Line connection there, it can be confusing). It is the No. 1 stop on the loop around Seoul. The name of the city comes from Seo or "capitol" Ul meaning "place."

I was walking up the steps from the Red Line going towards the Australian embassy, on my way to cash my paychecks or Korean Won to American Express checks as I did every month.

I passed the Koreana Hotel and at that exact moment I felt Loretta Archer was with me quite strongly. She said that since 1985 she had been my guardian angel. She said that she was leaving me now.

Loretta said that I was "good with money now" making and saving so much money (about $90,000, U.S., that year from being a model, television actor and university professor teaching English as a Second Language).

Also she said that she was wrong to say when I was 14 years old that, "Anthony would be the first one married and the first one divorced." That was odd, because till that time, and even today I have never been married.

I sensed she was happy for her son, Michael, the youngest, but concerned in some way for her older son.

And then she was gone. Just like that. When I bought the Korea Times newspaper later that day, on the back of the sports section there was one color photo. That photo was of Mark Loretta, the shortstop of the Milwaukee Brewers. I saved that photo in my book in which I keep of all the things God shows me. Was it a coincidence? Perhaps, but in that singular moment, I felt that Loretta was with me and that she has helped me through my rocky path from Arizona to Texas to South Africa to New York and South Korea.

I sometimes think back on the happiest times in my life. Was it working in South Africa in 1991 during that nation's sad fall to Marxism and the globalist agenda?

Or was in back in 1993, when I had my own house in Reagan, Texas, and was writing my novel "The Third Boer War." At night my friends Heidi, Jennifer, Marianne and I would have a cookout, build a campfire and then watch the occasional meteor shower. I remember Jennifer a.k.a. "Bookie" once saying to me, "You think that South Africa was the greatest time of your life, but you will look back one day at this time and remember it as the best time of your life." Oddly Jennifer and I had got to Arizona State together but never met until we both went to Texas A&M for advanced degrees several years later.

But with all respect to Jennifer I did happen upon an even greater time than that era in my life. No, it was not when I traveled to Turkey to search for Noah's Ark, journeyed to Belize to swim with giant sea turtles or flew off to Denmark to interview a desperate group of refugees at what I called "The Camp of the Saints."

The greatest moments of my life came between 1999 and 2000, when I had run off to a small island off of Thailand. A tropical paradise or so it seemed. I had no job or hope of one. I was running out of money. I was far from my family. But I lived so close to nature – I had many animals as pets near my hut, including my treasured German shepherd, "Lucky," a female whom I had rescued from the garbage pail. (The Thais drown or throw the females away). The island was almost empty in the summer months.

I made friends with a woman who owned a gas station. She had a little 3-year-old daughter named "White." When I would get petrol for my motorbike at 9 p.m. White would shake her finger at me and say, "It is almost time for you to go to bed!" (She knew I went to bed about 9:15 each night.)

I think back now about White and how innocent and pure she was in her pajamas, holding her milk bottle. And while all the druggies partied all night long on my island – in fact, they had come from the ends of the Earth to do so at the world famous Full Moon Party – I realize that this time was the best in my life, and with good reason. By living close to nature and interacting with simple people and children, I was able to identify very closely with God and to feel His power in my life.

In fact I would go so far to say that the times I feel most normal are when I am in the company of animals and children – for they are often untouched by the massive evil which haunts our "global civilization." By seeing the paganism of the European interlopers on my island and the cultural anarchy they brought to the peaceful local Thai people, I was able to treasure the Christian upbringing given to me by my parents. I remember White as representing all that was good about Thailand – along with the elephants.

And, though living in a hut on that far off island at the ends of the Earth, I thanked God that I was an American – because, as my stewardess friend Robin once told me – America is the country that taught me to fight for freedom, a constitutional republic and the God of the Bible.

Traveling from that island to face down the evils of the Killing Fields in Cambodia and the persecution of the Christian Karen hill tribe of Burma and the Hmong of Laos was a very dangerous trek that left me terribly sick and injured in a motorcycle crash.

After that motorcycle crash, I laid on the ground, covered in blood, and I had a total breakdown which lasted for about one minute. It was all I could afford. Still, it was one minute – one moment I will never forget because the Lord said, "Anthony if you want to help the persecuted, the voiceless, the haggard children and child soldiers, don't expect any reward but pain and sickness. Remember, Anthony, there is no buying or selling in the Kingdom of God."

Yet perhaps the most important of moments comes when wisdom takes root. We return to them seeking purified water to fill our empty glass. You might remember the time your mother told you, "Never be ashamed of your station in life; only be ashamed if you hurt other people," and "Give me the flowers now so I can enjoy them. Don't wait for my funeral."

There are moments of relief, when impending disaster passes by like the angel of death over the doorposts marked with lamb's blood. The negative pregnancy or AIDS test. The passing grade. Your plane touching down after a turbulent flight.

Since time will eventually grind the sum total of our lives to dust, it's important that we identify and cherish the moments that define our personal existence. Life is short; if you don't stop and look around once in a while – you could miss it. Like a detective, we must comb through the mundane and rudimentary elements of our daily routines to unearth such hidden jewels. Perhaps these memories are the only jewels we will be allowed to take with us to heaven for eternity.

In the end, we can encourage ourselves by understanding that while we cannot hold back the forces of time, we don't have to allow time to be our master.

And since the future is merely a set of probabilities based on what we do today – the sum of our thoughts, habits, goals and actions – we don't have to live in fear of what may lay around the next bend in the road. We can remember that "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind." We can change our bad habits, fix the mistakes of the past and re-inject ourselves into the plan God has for each of our lives. Remember, you can't keep a good man – or woman – down.

By following the advice of Plato – remember, "An unexamined life is not worth living," you can begin such an analysis today. It is my greatest wish that you will do so – this very moment.