Could it be that those of us who are really busy making plans for the future or looking too often to the past are missing the best of what life has to offer right now?
Could living in the moment be a function of our age? That is, are those of us who are more experienced, older, best suited to enjoy exactly what is going on in life right now?
What enables us to limit distractions, minimize intrusions and otherwise enjoy the show that is now?
Is the now really an ideal to aspire to? Is it really all it’s purported to be?
The “now” for this article is at least an hour long.
How come the now can be just a millisecond, too?
Is the now defined by any measure of time, can it be all-encompassing, consuming, or is it just something that ebbs and flows like a river?
If the now is good, or at least if living in the now is good, should we be conscious of remembering whatever it is that is pleasing to us in the now? Or is it as if it’s something so utopian, that to commit it to memory would be to rob it of the very life force it can nurture us with?
When old people remember the good old days, younger people are quick to point out that they should not be living in the past, that living in the now is what they should be doing.
I would tend to agree with that statement, provided however, we could actually LIVE in the past–because time travel is not possible. Or is it?
Are we not time traveling each time we look at an old photograph? Are not our minds capable of being transported back in time when we watch an old movie that is staged in the 1930s? DO we have to have lived during a certain period in order to enjoy it as if we had?
When we’re young we make plans for the future. We never truly understand the folly of such thoughts until we are older, until life has smacked us down enough times to help us realize the value of just making it through each DAY.
When we plan for retirement, for example, and especially when we are doing so when we are young, we are taking a lot for granted, like how healthy we will be, that our likes and dislikes will be the same as they are in the now right now, and that everyone who is important to us right now will be here when that retirement time comes around.
The now is something to be enjoyed when you can. It is just not possible to enjoy the now, non-stop. That is, if the now is now, this very instant, I would be literally burned out in less than an hour from all of the intensity of it.
What I can appreciate as the day comes to a close is that I have the power to have the now be repeatedly, in varying chunks of real time, too, and thus possessing the ability to enjoy each segment of the now concurrently or having it split up.
Sometimes the task at hand is not pleasurable. Is it not during these times, that in order to cope, we let our minds take over? When faced with an awful present, don’t we let our minds carry us to places that are far off, better and away from all the negativity of the actual now we are currently experiencing?
I suppose the now can be both good and bad. The key to having fun with any form of it is how we wrap our heads around it, as our physical state is less important whenever the notion (of the benefits) of living in the now are to be summoned.