I don’t know who said “Today is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present.” But I KNOW someone said it! And it is for real.
If you take a moment and reflect back in your life, you will see that a lot of interesting things have taken place. You have been through many varied situations. Some you handled with ease and aplomb and others you royally messed up. Your life has been rich with interactions and relationships. Again, some you have handled well and others…not so well. You have likely worn many hats both personally and in your work life. Some of them looked great on you and others were clearly not your style.
This is the fabric of life. Things that we perceive as good or bad in a continuum.
The challenge comes when we miss our moments because we are thinking/worrying forward or lamenting/regretting backwards. Certainly there is a place for reflecting back (I just asked you to do that a minute ago didn’t I?) and thinking forward. I call them learning from experience and planning, respectively. But not as a way of living our lives. I come from a long line of worriers. And for many years, I struggled with this too.
In your reflection, I bet if you could compile all the things you ever worried about, which would be a massive list, and then you compiled all of the worries that came true, you would find that a tiny fraction of what you worried about actually happened. So what came of all the worry time? It was wasted. It was a waste of the joy in the present. Life in the moment is pretty good if you let yourself feel it. If you are reading this, you don’t have to worry about food to eat, a roof over your head, or the opportunity to make something of yourself. You have them. You get to LIVE. There are a lot of people in the world who do not have this privilege.
You can listen intently as your child shares their enthusiasm about something…anything…and relish this moment that will never be again in the same way
You have the privilege of holding the hand of the one you love and just being in that moment. You can listen intently as your child shares their enthusiasm about something…anything…and relish this moment that will never be again in the same way. You can watch a butterfly and marvel at it’s beauty. You can enjoy a sunset. You can stand by the water and simply appreciate the feeling of the sand between your toes. You can do and be whatever the moment calls for. You have this gift.
But what if what the thing I am worried about comes to pass? Then you will deal with it then…in that moment. But you need to live NOW in THIS moment. Life is only right now. Everything else is fiction.
“The current moment is where our better future begins. The past gave us a wealth of memories and experiences and the present gives us a chance to use them wisely. The present brings us an opportunity to create an exciting future. But the promise of the future demands that we pay a price in the present.”-Jim Rohn
“You are happiest and most productive in life when you are living in the present.”-Ken Blanchard
