I sit here in my new(ish) house(rental) here in Fort Collins and I ponder my future. Don’t we all? If only I could learn to spend more time in the Now. I hang on to the past as the one clear way to define who I am. I look to the future as the savior of everything I long for. I don’t spend enough time Right Here, Right Now. Jesus Jones had it right.
The question is, then: How to be here, now?
Toughie. No easy answer to that one. I read something recently about how to disconnect yourself from your thoughts. Listen to them, but don’t judge them. Recognize them and either laugh or dismiss them. Then, you’ll no longer take the contents of your mind seriously as your ‘sense of self’ won’t need to depend on it and the less time you will spend brooding. The more you identify with your mind, the more you suffer. The book went on to say that once you realize you are not present, you are present.
I’m not sure I buy into all that. But I am a thinker, so the ideas are tempting. I think about everything; meantime, the minutes, hours and days tick away. I lose them and when I think about the Gift of Life, I worry I will end up with the Ultimate Regret; namely, that I wasted my time and died in vain.
Writing is a chance for me to get the thoughts out and away. Maybe in the process I can ‘disassociate’ with them and help myself be more present in the Now.
In today’s world I feel this is more important than ever. It amazes me how much of our precious time we spend of our Gift of Life staring at screens and doomscrolling. (I understand why they call it that. Most of the stuff I watch is related to crashing: cars, construction equipment, bikes, skiers. It’s terrible.) Why do I waste my time on this? I know it’s bad and yet. Someone once said (Annie Dillard?) that the ‘way we spend our days, is the way we spend our lives’.
So, as I launch yet another blog to yet another hobby I hope to make my life more about the Now and not so much about the Then or the When.
As Horace said a really, really long time ago in his famous Ode XI:
Be wise, strain the wine, and cut back long hope into a small space. Even as we speak, envious time flies past. Harvest the day and leave as little as possible for tomorrow.
Roman Krznaric Carpe Diem: Seizing the Day in a Distracted World, 2017
