Living in the Now

I like living in the present. It has its drawbacks though. You don’t get to wallow in the past and spend days thinking about things you should have done and never did. Sometimes I wish I could live completely in the Now, but then I wouldn’t have the opportunity to send resentful thoughts to my dead father about how he never loved me enough or to my ex- for never giving me the kind of support that could keep a relationship fit and together. But that is neither here nor there, because I am a NOW kind of guy. Right?

            I live in the present. I keep my mind focused in on the task at hand. I don’t spend my time on how often I should condemn myself for eating that dessert last night, but stay present with the harder problem of how to get all the ingredients for the brownies I’m trying not to make today--in the trash can--before my mother sees them and goes into a diabetic coma. There are harder ships to sail than last night’s mistaken dessert mishaps, you know.  “Stay present,” I keep saying to myself.

            I looked at the clock this morning and noticed that I had forgotten to move the time ahead an hour. I wondered if I had some time to meander in the past before I actually made the move toward the present. I thought about a creation with no humans in it, just birds, animals, trees and vegetation. I wondered if any of the creatures in that kind of world wondered what was happening in the past or what would happen in the future. I tried to imagine if there were any animals or fish or vegetation in the earth that actually tarried in the passed as humans do.

            Then I simply thought: How much time had I wasted thinking, deliberating, wondering “what if,” and imagining what could be or what could have been had I just been someone different or made a different choice.

            Suddenly, sadness overwhelmed me. I was no longer the me that lived in the happy present. I was a little boy who never grew up. I was a teenager who got made fun of. I was a partner who got left, a writer who didn’t get published. There are so many things I’m not. If I focus my energies on all those things, I will always come up deficient.

            So, living in the now, today, right this moment, is about being me—authentic and real, whatever that is. I accept me, I love me, I cherish this moment, whatever it brings me. And I honor this moment, because it is part of a great plan in my life to make me, and shape me, and mold me into this fascinating, perfectly wonderful character that will always be wandering in a world where everything is constantly changing.

Is it any wonder that if we stop for one minute to ponder the past, we get frightened?

            Living in the now is not just a choice that would be good to make, it is a must for a being that flows from moment to moment, that lives from breath to breath, that constantly changes sloughing off cells and making new one moment by moment, and emotionally dealing with old and creating new neuro-pathways constantly.

            Yes, I like living in the present, because when I don’t live in the present, I linger in a place that is foreign to my every cell. My only paradigm choice is this moment, when you think about it. All else pales to the present.