Editor’s note: for the next two weeks we’ll be running the best of our This Ordinary Day pieces. We’ve enjoyed working with so many great writers and wonderful people and felt it was high time to take a look back at some of what they’ve brought us. If you’d like to see more pieces, please take a trip over to our archives page — it’ll be well worth your time.

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I live a busy life.

I rush from moment to moment, always planning ahead, always focusing on a goal. I’ve always been like that. I can’t think of a time in my life when I wasn’t thinking of the next step. The next moment. The next item to check off on my perpetual to-do list. I would say, without a doubt, one of my greatest weaknesses is forgetting that life is constantly swirling all around me while I’m busy making future plans.

Thankfully, sometimes I’m lucky enough to be hit with a moment so stunning that it knocks the breath — and all of my plans — right out of me.

At the bottom of a steep dirt road at a camp in the heart of Texas Hill Country, a sign spells outs odd, if not amusing, directions. Yes! You drive in the river, it reads.

In our case we walked.

Seventy-five screaming, giggly seventh and eighth graders and their chaperones walked straight into the water and up the road to our campsite for a three-day end-of-year camping trip.

Originally, the plan had been to haul the kids through the water on a trailer. The plan changed, and I’m so glad it did.

As we entered the icy water of the Frio River, nearly everyone around me screamed and shouted. In an instant, I was surrounded by giggling and shouting and every other kind of joyful noise I wish I heard out of my students’ mouths more often. Sometimes, teaching in the rough and tumble neighborhood in which I do, it can be hard to remember that at the end of the day, my kids are just that: kids.

Giggling, goofy, joyful kids.

There aren’t really enough words to truly describe the looks on their faces as they walked through the river that day. Every last horrible thing I go through on a daily basis at my school is worth it for being a part of that moment in their lives. As they slipped and slid all over the rocks and clung to hands and arms and anything they could use to stay upright on the slippery rock bottom of the road, I was struck by the awesomeness of it all. For many of these kids, it was their first time ever leaving Houston. For even more of them, it was their first time setting foot in fresh water.

For that one moment, in that 100-yard stretch of water, they were just kids. Not poor kids or troubled kids or delinquents or projects. But for that moment, they were what every person should be at least once in their life: perfectly filled with an overpowering happiness.

And so was I.

Take a kid into a river for the first time in their entire lives or watch their eyes when they look at the stars for the first time without the glare of the city lights and tell me anything in your important, busy life matters. I guarantee that after seeing their faces, it won’t. That walk in the river was one of those moments that if I could just capture it and play it on repeat in my mind for the rest of my life, I would be a better teacher, friend, person. There’s no doubt.

As I followed the last group of kids up the dirt road that led to our campsite, I listened to their laughter disappear over the hill and I stopped and stood in the road smiling and crying, completely stunned by the simple power of the moment.

It’s a very odd thing to realize what it must feel like to be a parent. To be standing on a hill and looking at a group of wet, hysterically happy children and just thank God for that moment. Thank God that they were able to have that moment in their lives and that you got to be there to share it with them. To watch them take it all in. I didn’t realize until right then that I have reached a point in my life where I’ve had enough of these moments to know that, for them, this was one. It’s a memory that will be there through all the ups and downs of the coming years — something to lean on and appreciate when life inevitably gets a little rough.

For all the things I chase in my life and all the moments and relationships and obligations that always seem a little less than perfect, a 100-yard walk through the river was one of the most perfect moments I’ve ever had. What’s more, for all the goals and plans and dreams I’m always chasing after every day, I would not trade one second of that walk for anything. I would not give up a single step for any accolade or achievement.

These are the moments when we’re truly alive. When laughter and holding hands are enough to sustain us through all the bad things that cloud our lives. Maybe if we stop more often and look at the faces of those taking in a first experience — like a walk on a river road — we’ll be better people for it. Maybe, at least for a few seconds, we’ll remember to live in the present because goals and dreams are nice, but what good are any of them if we’re not living the life we’ve got right now? Maybe all the worry and anxiety so many of us carry around can be lightened or even released by the voice of a truly good friend saying I love you or the smile of a stranger on the street or the shouts and laugher of a group of ragtag, messy children.

At least, for my sake, I hope it can.

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