Staying In The Present
Today it struck me. I thought ‘Holy shit, look where I am. Look what I’m doing. Some people would kill to be in the position I’m in. I’m in Malta, a country I can literally call my second home, living the local lifestyle. I’m just about to go for a walk along the beautiful coastline, with my dearest little Jennie, who I love more than you can ever imagine’. To be in this position I am in now, is an immense privilege which I feel like I have been taking for granted.
It feels like I haven’t been living in the present at all. I have been focusing way too much on the past or on the future. I have been focusing on everything else but the now, the present moment. Instead of focusing on what I’m doing this exact second, my mind has been racing around thinking about what I can be doing in the next few weeks to come or things I could have done better. This lack of presence has led me to feel a bit more agitated, and upon reflection, here are some thoughts:
Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on myself, after all, living in the present moment is difficult. It’s so easy to worry about the future, overthink the past, and get distracted from the present moment. Just think about how we are constantly bombarded with notifications and information from all directions e.g. from social media, our emails, the news etc. The world we live in is busier than it has ever been before, and as a result, we struggle to live in the present moment.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says ‘Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation’. We spend so much time worrying about all the ‘bad’ things which might happen in the future, when the reality is, whatever we are worrying about probably won’t happen at all. In fact, researchers at Cornell University found that, over an extended period of time, 85% of what people worried about never happened. In short, we are excessive worriers when we don’t need to be. It links perfectly to what Eckhart Tolle summarised in The Power of Now: ‘You can always cope with the now, but you can never cope with the future’.
The past has already been, and the future is something we can’t always control, which leaves the present. The present moment is all we will ever have, so all we can do is try our best to live in it whilst we can.
