Stay in the moment

Or become lost in time.

Many of us drift out of time. We live inside our heads and ruminate over the past or range forward into the future.

We become lost in an invented timeline that only exists in our imaginations.

And yet life is unfolding right here, right now. It can only exist in the present moment.

We can only live now

Nature has given us big brains and imaginations. We use them and misuse them accordingly.

As Western society becomes more atomized, we withdraw more into our bubbles, aided by always available virtual toys.

We are spending more time alone. We seek out company less. We spend ever more time solo. Some have no easy means to connect with others.

All this creates conditions for mental escape. Conditions where we find ourselves floating inside our minds where there are few constraints and too much is possible.

The past is gone, but has its uses

The past is gone, and we cannot relive it. Life is a one-shot deal.

Yet many do relive it inside their own heads. An endless loop, revisiting past glories or old wounds. Yesterday, the day before, times long gone. Better days and other places. Anything but here and now.

This is a distortion of our perceptiveness and mental abilities. Cognitive tools designed for harsher times than ours to aid survival, bent out of shape by too much leisure time we are not designed to enjoy.

Assessing the past can help us learn valuable lessons and change course. But living in the past is problematic. Reliving what has already been is limiting, a mental cul-de-sac that can be strangely reassuring because it is known and understood, its edges long since rounded off. This damages us over time since this mental landscape cannot threaten us, so we do not change and adapt.

The past is gone and must be understood as gone so we can move on.

The future is unknown and unknowable

Similarly, the future has not happened. Using imagination we can prepare based on experience. We can visualize what it will look like.

But some of us can get lost in these fantasy projections.

The mind has no limits, unlike reality, so anything goes. Everything is possible, from great triumphs to devastating catastrophes. Unrealistic calm and immense drama all from the safety of an armchair.

This is where anxiety comes from, living in our heads, worrying about future events yet to happen.

Most of our worries never come to pass.

This is a waste of our talents. The anxious do not live fulfilling lives. Their worries prevent them embracing it as it must be and all because they invented problems inside their heads.

Our own minds, conspiring against us. What a farce.

Learn to always come back

We must remain tethered to now. We must condition ourselves to see the magnificence of now.

We must understand how superior the current moment is to our broken perception of the past or our fictional imaginings of the future.

Now is real; now contains the stuff of life. Everything we want can begin today.

All that pains us from the past can be rejected. All that worries us about tomorrow can be understood and overcome by remaining focused on today.

This activity starts in the present moment.

Now is all that exists, all that can exist, and it needn’t contain fear or anxiety or regret. These are artefacts of rumination not living, as natural as they often feel. Such is the power of the mind; it can con even ourselves. A dangerous tool if not used in a disciplined way.

We must banish the attractive lure of what we conjure up in our minds and anchor ourselves to concrete reality wherever possible.

Focusing on now is the solution to much of what ails society and ourselves. Rein yourself back in and embrace now.

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