Now
Many people are always looking to the future with the hope that things will change for the better. This year will be different. This week will be a brand new week. Often, our concern with what will be is a way of proclaiming that despite what has been, more satisfactory events are surely on the horizon. Yet, every moment we spend thinking of what the future holds for us is a moment of right now that we’ve missed.
I’m not suggesting that we should never make plans or preparations of any kind. Even in nature, some animals store food for winter or migrate to warmer climates for the season. There is a difference in preparing for what we know will come and hoping for things to change. While “looking to better days” is comforting, the only time when change occurs is right now.
Right now is when our lives are lived. Right now is when we experience all that’s around us. Right now is when every baby is born and every life comes to its end. The past is just our memory of right now. The future is only a dream of what we want right now to be. Where we go is determined by the steps we take and the choices we make at this very moment.
The present is our anchor. It’s where we always are. If we constantly think about where we want to go, or dwell upon where we have been, we are missing out on now, and that’s the journey. The most important thing we can do is to focus on today and our choices for each moment. Because those choices are why we are here.
You may have heard the saying “one day at a time”. Keep this in heart and next year can be a better year. Next week can be a better week. Next moment can be a better moment. Be thoughtful of the present, and you will find you had a thoughtful future.
Who We Were Vs. Who We Are
“Sometimes people think of themselves as who they have been and forget to keep being who they are.”
Life is a series of experiences. As we live, we make choices related to those experiences. Over time the choices we make become based on similar choices we made in the past instead of being a new choice based on the current situation. This is accompanied by sayings like “that’s how it’s always been done” and “I’ve grown up now” as justification.
Before our growing history of choices, as a child and even young adult, we were “carefree”. We lived for the moment. We took risks. We were ourselves. But with each new choice we made, we slowly covered our fluid motions with structure. Moment by moment we cemented ourselves into a statue-like shell.
There comes a point where we forget what it was like to be who we are, because all of our choices become based on who we have been through the years. Nothing is new. Colors are not as bright. We have it all figured out. We know how the world works.
So what’s the point? Existence for the sake of just existing is hollow.
Tenses of Being
Knowledge represents the past.
Anything you can know has already happened. What you know is based on perceptions of the past: taught to you by others or memories from your own experiences.
Imagination represents the future.
We imagine things that could be: maybe things we want to be, maybe things that will be. They are possibilities. The future is a cloud of possibilities.
Awareness is now.
Now is neither knowledge nor imagination. Awareness is the bridge between what has been and what will be.
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