“Be where you are, otherwise you will miss your life.”
– Buddha
I’m at a very different place in my life. I’m feeling pretty good and I think I know why. I’m happy about what I’ve accomplished in the past few months involving my writing and I’m looking forward to exciting things in the fall. That makes me feel pretty good right here, in the present. It got me thinking about where I spend most of the time, and what makes me happy there.
They say we shouldn’t live in the past – I get that. It’s over and done. But wait! There are some good things in the past that we shouldn’t just leave there; cherished memories, proud accomplishments, humorous occasions and hallmark moments. The past has gotten a really bad rap of late. I’m not sure we haven’t done it a disservice. We’ve been throwing out the baby with the bath water.
The future hasn’t fared much better. You can’t live in the future but you can live for the future but “they” (who are they anyway?) say you shouldn’t. How can you know what to do today if you don’t know where you want to end up? You can’t even drive your car for long without having a destination in mind. We need the future to give us direction. Besides, the future can contain even more good things, proud accomplishments, humorous occasions and hallmark moments. It doesn’t deserve that bad rap either.
That leaves the present. I love that quote by Buddha! I’m here. How could you be anywhere else? What’s wrong with wandering in your thoughts to the past now and then, especially to retrieve some good stuff to motivate and affirm you? And what’s wrong with meandering into the future to check on the dreams you’re building? Isn’t that where the blueprints are? I guess I’m living – everywhere – I’ve got a foot in the past, an eye on the future and I’m dancing in the present (well, OK, hopping around because one foot is in the past…you know what I mean!)
Where do you spend most of your time; the past, the future, or do you live right here in the present?
photo credit: Edgaa
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Hi Lori
Their is one other thing about the future that is very seductive and in my estimation very dangerous which Pascal points to in this quote. Thinking about the future is seductive because it produces the feeling that we are doing something about the future and since we are accomplishing so much how could we give it up. The only problem is that we are not actually accomplishing anything at all, it is only ,a psychological effect that we are experiencing . It is like getting stuck in the mud with your car you can spin the tires all day and you will only sink the car deeper into the mud. If you get out of the car and go into the woods and get some wood to put under the tires so that they will not spin any more, then you will get the car unstuck. It is dangerous when your thoughts about the future produce anxiety or worry because our bodies believe the threat is real and as a result it prepares the body to defend itself by producing cortisol a stress hormone. As you know stress is believed to be responsible for 80 to 90 % of illness today. Now in this case we have two psychological effects tacking place simultaneously the feeling of worry or anxiety and the feeling that we are doing something about it. We are in effect setting up an infinite loop. We are spinning our tires in the mud which could last for minutes, hours or years.. You see in the present you can go into the woods for some wood, In the future you cannot you can only think about it. Both will produce the psychological effect of accomplishing something only one of them will be true.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Albert Einstein
If you start with dissatisfaction no matter what you think or how good it looks you will eventually end with dissatisfaction. Like produces Like.
Love you
John
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