Now is Now

Currently reading: The Shack by William Paul Young on page 120

Do you live more in the past, present or future, in your mind? Now I know this isn’t a new concept. I’ve heard it and acted on it many times, but I always end up backsliding.

I always like the idea of living in the today, but I don’t naturally move that way. I have a tendency to either reminisce or daydream. Obviously both of those aren’t living in the now, but they are so easy to do. I need to make a real effort to be more in the present.

I don’t know what to think about while I’m in the moment though. It almost feels like it is going to be yoga-ish. Maybe that is the wrong term. Maybe it is more Zen.

It sounds great, but then I try and imagine it and end up with me taking a walk. While I’m walking I keep trying to focus on the now, looking at a squirrel, but then I wonder where the squirrel came from. Then I refocus on the now. I see a ripple in a pond. I immediately picture the rock that must have caused the ripple. Then as I shake my head to return to the moment I hear some overly drugged up hippy philosopher slowly reading, almost chanting, “Don’t think about the imaginary world of tomorrow. Don’t live life in the sugar coated memories of yesterday. You are not a being of your experiences but a being of the one true experience shared among your fellow life forms. There is no I, no now, no life. There is only one and oneness. Go, now, I tell you live life. Go, one with oneness.”

The whole vision kind of goes crazy after that with Willy Wonka style lollipop trees and early seventies horror camera effects. Of course as I write this I realize I am not living in the now. I am living in imagination. It isn’t any of the time frames. Oh well, I guess I’ll try again… In the present…