Everybody keeps telling us that the way to true happiness is directly related to one’s ability to live fully in The Now. But living in The Now requires that we give all of our attention to the present moment. That means no daydreaming, no distractions, no thinking about what you did yesterday or what you’re going to do tomorrow. This sounds kind of boring. Especially if what you happen to be doing at the present moment is dull, unexciting and/or tedious.
Escaping The Now is impossible when you really think about it, so why do we spend so much mental energy struggling against it? Who wouldn’t love to shortcut the boring Nows to get to the more exciting Nows. Maybe that’s what we are trying to do when we let our thinking go into auto-pilot mode, by paying attention only to the little drama in our minds, we try to tune out reality until it gets more exciting.
When you really think about it, The Now is the most abundant thing in the universe. It’s with us from the time we are born until the day we die and maybe even after that. It’s like cosmic fly paper. I guess you could even go so far as to say that nothing really exists at all except for the present moment. No matter how hard you try to escape, you’re just going to be stuck with a limitless supply of Now. If we could come to terms with that, it might be easier to accept what is happening now for what it really is — all we have. And there’s no reason not to pay attention to it because once this Now is over there’s just going to be more Now.
So in order to be happy, it seems like a good idea to practice paying full attention to what is going on now, whether we like it or not, so that when The Now gets better we’ll know how to enjoy it. And it’s been rumored that practicing being in The Now will make you happier. And maybe even make you all the way happy. I don’t know about you, but I’m willling to give it a try.
Until next time . . . I love you
Such a good idea Linda. I’m happy to give it a try too. Sounds simple and makes perfect sense. Appreciate the now, pay attention to the now, the now is better than we realize. Thanks for sharing your genius thought process this morning
I like your thinking mom. Living in the now sometimes sucks so we resist it and pretend we are living in the “Later” or the “Earlier”. But what’s strange is that often we think about how earlier sucked and we dwell in the suckiness of that time. Or we think about “Later” and worry about how “the later” might suck also.
I guess the key is to just live in the now and shut up about it.