“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” — Eckhart Tolle
The perfect moment may never come. We’ve all been caught up with work and our everyday duties, always anxious for that day to come, that trip you’ve been planning with your friends for weeks, for a person to come into our lives. We’re always living in the future, waiting and waiting anxiously for something, someday that isn’t guaranteed to arrive. Stress invades your body and mind, still trying to rush things. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have specific things to look forward to, but by relying on your happiness to a day, an event, a person, when are you going to choose to build on your joy to now? As I begin to set up my calendar for this upcoming month, setting up essential dates for days that I look forward to, and I started to think about those days that have nothing written on them. I’m in a constant battle with myself always waiting and not appreciating this day. We will almost never get what we want, but we usually get what we need. Things that won’t turn out the way you’d expect, but often turn out the way they should. I suggest to live day by day, and to really appreciate this exact moment in your life. This unique moment is real and you won’t get it back. I’m always surprised as to how fast time goes by.
We all have objectives and thinks to look forward in the future, but we make the mistake of putting all of our focus on it, that we just end up blurring this very moment; this gift of being alive. Anything that’s worth it in the future is not more valuable than what you can experience now. We don’t often realize this, but sooner or later, our life’s on and off button will turn off at some point. It might even be before we get the chance to get to that long-waited-day. That’s the problem with living in the future. Because nothing in this life is 100% guaranteed. I continuously ask myself, what if I don’t wake up tomorrow? I’ll regret relying on my happiness to a day, a person, to someday.
The majority of us tend to spend a great deal of time of our lives mourning past events, worrying too much about future, influencing a significant amount of anxiousness with the present moment. We waste this precious time. To a large extent, our inner peace is linked as to how able are we to live in this present moment. We think about what ifs, what could’ve been, what should’ve, that we diminish the gratitude and joy of each subsequent moment. Independently, of what happened last year or yesterday or what could happen tomorrow, this very moment is all you have now that’s guaranteed. Now, all of this anxiety that we force un ourselves affect our happiness significantly and well being. If we are always worried about rushing our life without focusing on life’s present, we will end up not fully experiencing and appreciating every moment that passes by us. I didn’t realize it but my happiness just wasn’t there anymore, it was attached to something else. This is considered one of the most common regrets in older people: spending too much time worrying that they forgot to live their lives. Will you be one of them? Or choose to live today?