Live Now!

All you have is here and now. The measure of our peace of mind and the measure of our personal effectiveness are determined by how much we are able to live in the present moment. Regardless of what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow, NOW is where you are. The key to happiness and contentment must be in focusing our minds on the present moment.

One of the beautiful things about young children is that they absorb themselves totally in the present moment. They manage to stay totally involved in whatever they are doing, whether it be building a sandcastle, combing a doll's hair, moving a toy car around in circles or whatever else they choose to devote their energies to.

As we become adults, many of us learn the art of thinking about and worrying about several things at once. We can allow past problems and future concerns to crowd our present such that we become miserable and ineffective. We also learn to postpone our pleasures and our happiness, often developing a notion that sometime in the future everything will be much better than it is now.

The high school student thinks, "when I am out of this school and don't have to do what I am told, then everything will be great!" He leaves school and suddenly recognizes that he won't be happy until he has left home. He leaves home and starts university and soon decides, "when I have got my degree, then I'll be really happy!" Eventually he gets his degree at which time he realizes that he can't be happy until he has a job. He gets his job and has to start at the bottom of the heap. You guessed it. He can't be happy yet. As the years roll by, he postpones his happiness and peace of mind until he gets engaged, gets married, starts buying a home, gets a better job, starts a family, gets the kids in school, owns his home, gets the kids out of school, retires... and he drops dead before he allows himself to be blissfully happy. All his present moments were spent planning for a wonderful future which never arrived.

Do you relate at all to this kind of story? Do you know of anybody who has been putting off being happy until some time in the future? The thing about being happy is that you are mostly involved with the present. We decide to be happy on the journey, not just when we reach our destination.

Similarly, we can postpone spending time with the people who mean the most to us. A study showed that the average middle class father spent about 37 seconds quality time per day with his child. No doubt many of the fathers involved had great plans for spending time with their loved ones "when the house is finished", "when the pressure is off at work", "when there is more money in the bank"... The point is that none of us has a guarantee that we will be here tomorrow. Now is all we have got.

Living in the now also means that we enjoy whatever we are doing for its own sake, and not just for the end result. If you happen to be painting your front verandah, you can make a point of enjoying every stroke of the brush, of learning everything there is to know about how best to do the job, all the while being aware of the breeze on your face, the birds singing in the trees and everything else that is happening around you.

Living in the now is about expanding our awareness to make the current moment more delicious rather than shutting off. Each of us has the choice, moment by moment, as to whether we really live, absorb and allow ourselves to be touched and affected.

Whenever we are living the present moment, we drive fear from our mind. Essentially, fear is concern over events which might happen sometime in the future. This concern can be paralyzing to the point where we find it almost impossible to do anything constructive. However, you are only open to intense fear when you are being inactive. The minute you start to take action and actually DO SOMETHING, fear subsides. Living in the now is about taking action without fear of the consequences. It is about putting in the effort for the sake of the involvement, without worry as to whether we will get our just rewards.

It is worthwhile remembering that we cannot replace a something with a nothing. If you have worries on your mind; such as your home was on fire or you met in a car accident or your spouse has left you, it is no easy matter to just empty out our mind and find peace. The easiest way to improve your mental state is to take action, get involved, participate. DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!

Ring an old friend or make a new one, go to the gym, take the children to the park or help your neighbour in the garden.

From the heart of:
D. M-Reid
2theworld