Living In The Now
The future isn't a concept to which we can only dream of, or something that can only be envisioned as a far away date, the future is much closer than that. The future is the very next second we occupy.
Our time is divided into seconds. Sixty seconds in a minute, three thousand six hundred seconds in an hour, eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day. If our time alive is made up by seconds then its easy to agree they could also be seen as frames. A picture shot of life, frame by frame, as each second passes us. These frames together, create the picture that is our life. A completely unique viewpoint of the world. There are three states that exist at any one moment: the past, present and future. Your future is the next second you are going to occupy. Any moment that comes next is the future sliding into the present. We have no control over our future, we have no way of predicting it, nor can we ever stop it arriving. All we can do is welcome it.
We can control how our present receives the future. Our present is the best gift we can have: The gift of life. To be alive and witness the world during that very moment. During that second, everyone you know and love is still alive and present with you. Even though they might be four thousand miles away, you know they are alive and that is a happy feeling. Being alive is to feel all the emotions you can feel and experience as a human. At some point, during our future, there is a moment where someone you love will not longer be there. It’s inevitable and cannot be changed, nor ignored. With it comes a set of emotions that make for some difficult times, but will applying it in your present change it? If the present is only in existence for a second, do you wish to waste any part of that on giving energy to something you cannot control? There is so much to experience at any one time, that the moment is where we should live. The sounds of nature, the feeling of the seasons, the love that is around us, your purpose and contributions by others. These moments are memories in the making and to experience them completely models how they become our past.
Your past isn't a distant memory, it's the second that was once your present, and two seconds ago it was your future. It cannot be changed and was meant only to be experienced fully. Therefore, there is no need to bring your past into your present. It's gone and only served to be built upon. While you are living in the present, you are also making sure you leave it as you would want to receive it as the custodian of the past. The emotions we attach to our memories have the greatest power over us. I might not remember an outfit I wore or gifts I received on my 16th birthday, but I remember how I felt. Our emotions are the only thing we can control in life. The one thing that unites our past, present and future is how we experience them. If we ensure that we welcome the next second of our life with a smile, with love and gratitude, we not only experience it that way, it moves into our past with those emotions attached.
So I find myself asking, how do I want my life to look? Do I want to spend the present worrying about the future? It'll be here in a second, why waste time in your present on thinking about it! Do I want to spend my present thinking about the past? I've already lived it, why would I want to relive it in place of the present? Especially if those memories have negative emotions attached to them. We will encounter times in our lives where we feel sad, hurt, angry and lost. Grief, sickness, and sudden change in our lives can be a catalyst to these emotions. What we are able to do though, is layer over some positive emotions to lessen the impact of our past. Something I have ensured I've passed on to my daughter is that every bad news I have had to deliver, so has a happy set of emotions been laid on top. I try to tell a joke so we laugh, or make the activity before or after the news something she really enjoys. Over time I have seen her develop this skill herself and she now replaces sadness with laughter because we can always find something to laugh about. It does not negate negative emotions, it just ensures our pasts are filled with positive emotions to act as a better baseline for us.
We cannot control the future, we are all on our own journeys and destiny, but we can control how we live, how we experience life and how we store memories if we ever need to return to them. Our past, present and future are not just three separate elements, but the embodiment of now and we are damn lucky to be alive to witness it.
