I Choose NOW
Hi all! Nancy here. In case you’ve forgotten (or didn’t know), I am Dr. Sara’s Office Manager. I’ve taken over the blog this week!
As many of you will know, Dr. Sara has always been big on books that inspire and impart knowledge. She recently shared with me It’s That Simple - A User’s Manual For Human Beings, by Mavis Karn. Rather than chapters, this book is a series of letters to the reader. The other day, I just picked it up, set the intention to find something I needed to know, opened it to a page, and started reading. The chapter, or letter, that I came upon was “Letter Thirteen – In Praise of Now”. Wow! It was exactly what I needed to read!
Do you ever find yourself worrying or fantasizing about the future? What about reliving past experiences? I think most of us do it at some time. What this letter highlighted was that there is no past or future. There is only NOW. What we call the past or the future is just a collection of thoughts we have, either memory or imagination. And those thoughts are not always accurate, to say the least! The only real moment is now. That is the only time that exists. Mavis says “it is only ever NOW”.
So why does this matter to me so much? As I get older (and wiser) I don’t want to waste the time I have. I don’t want to feel the “woulda-shoulda-coulda” of the past. Those memories are just what I can recall of something that happened or didn’t based on what I knew at the time. I did the best I could with what I had. I also don’t want to feel anxious about the future or think “it will be great when…” Why does something else have to happen for me to feel complete or happy? What if that thing or event doesn’t ever happen?
Mavis says this early in the letter:
“So if we are the experiencer – the creator or our own thought by thought experience of our life and the author of our every moment – the most important question we can ask ourselves is simply this:
How do you want to feel (experience) NOW?”
It isn’t always easy to stay in the NOW. Even though now is our default state (you don’t see babies worrying about the future), external things pull our attention away from it. We get sucked into the vortex of social media, other people’s opinions, etc. We can choose differently. We choose where we put our attention, what we create. When we remember that the past and future aren’t real and that in this moment, we are just fine and whole, worry and anxiety dissipate.
I don’t know about you, but this feels a lot freer – and that’s exactly how I want to live my life. How do you want to experience your life? You get to choose. Choose wisely.
If you’re interested, below is the full letter from Mavis. And if you’re really interested, you can find her book on Amazon!
In Light and Love,
Nancy
Letter Thirteen
___________________________
IN PRAISE OF NOW
Dear reader,
Let’s do some simple math regarding time. If the past is made up of memory (stored thought) and the future is made up of imagination (dreamed thought), then the only time that has any reality to it is NOW. Which means that it is always NOW, it will never in your lifetime be any other time than NOW, and we can only ever experience NOW.
So if we are the experiencer – the creator of our own thought by thought experience of our life and the author of our every moment – the most important question we can ask ourselves is simply this:
How do you want to feel (experience) NOW?
We are often advised to “be present in the moment” as if there were actually any alternative available to us. For example, when I was a very young girl, my father was in the armed services in the war in Europe. One day someone mentioned it was already Tuesday where my dad was, so I asked if we could call him so he could tell us what happened. Everyone laughed, but no one explained to me why that plan wasn’t likely to work out.
It took a few years, but I get it now. It is always the same NOW everywhere. It is always just NOW. And NOW is always enough. So why don’t we just stay here and live from moment to moment?
I suspect it’s because like with most habits, leaving the present to hang out in the past or future seems reasonable to us. To begin highlighting the faulty thinking behind those reasons, I’d like to share some thoughts I have about “the past”.
It seems to me that we don’t really realize that the past doesn’t even exist outside of our own minds. What we call “the past” is a collection of memories that, more often than not, are inaccurate and incomplete. It is a blend of spotty thinking, revised facts, selective editing, blatant falsehoods, and unconscious fantasies.
Our pasts are stories stored in our memory banks about the best we (and everyone else) knew to be possible at the time they happened. This is the simple truth. Nobody could do better until they knew better. It is also true of NOW. We are doing the best we know to be possible, moment by moment. And when we know better, we will do better.
I think it would be really, really helpful if we all understood that about ourselves and others. It explains everything. It is why we cannot have a better childhood, and it is why we need to stop telling ourselves we can’t enjoy life NOW until some mythical moment in time when our pasts never happened.
The same thing is true about the future. For example, many years ago I was at a family gathering, sitting in a rocking chair with a relative’s newborn daughter in my arms. It was a lovely, soothing feeling to just look at her and marvel at her perfect tininess.
I began overhearing some snippets of conversations nearby:
• “Won’t it be nice when she sleeps through the night?”
• “Just wait until she starts smiling – that’s the best!”
• “I bet you’ll be glad when you can wear your regular clothes again!”
• “Won’t she be lovely when she grows some hair?”
Unwittingly, everyone was creating subtle dissatisfaction with NOW by focusing on how much better things would be in an imaginary future. Then it occurred to me that I did the same thing on a regular basis, using phrases like “I can hardly wait until…”, “Won’t it be nice when…”, “I wish___ would be over so that ___ can start happening”, etc.
Isn’t that an interesting habit of using one’s thinking?
Since NOW is the only time that actually exists, it seems a shame to waste it by always wanting to trade it for something better in an imaginary future.
If you are anything like me, keeping your attention on NOW has been an elusive task at times. But the good news is, leaving NOW to get lost in the remembered past or imagined future is just a habit. That means we can catch ourselves at it in any moment and come straight back home to NOW.
The more clearly I see this, the more I notice myself and others doing so naturally, without effort. I see that we were all born with the present moment as our default state, and just got slowly, innocently, incrementally educated away from hanging out there.
This is as true in our actions as it is in our thinking. There is an ancient Taoist concept known as “Wu Wei” which roughly translates as “effortless action” or “spontaneity”.
This is the state of mind babies and small children exist in most of the time. It is also a good description of “the zone”. Most athletes I have known, both personally and professionally, are well acquainted with “the zone”, as are artists, musicians, scientists, writers, and anyone else who periodically finds themselves completely absorbed in something beyond themselves.
“The zone” has been described as a feeling of timelessness, a “no-thought” sensation, a sense of complete well-being and responsiveness where we have everything instantly available for the task at hand.
Most of us tend to believe that this seemingly magical state of flow is only available in a specific activity or set of circumstances, and even then only sporadically, appearing out of the blue when we least expect it. But what if “The zone” is portable? What if it’s experienceable any time, anywhere by simply getting out of the way and allowing ourselves to fully experience whatever it is that we are doing NOW?
Can you see that means we are only ever one busy-headed moment away from being in “the zone” and experiencing flow NOW?
Could it be that simple?
Love,
Mavis