The Present

Look at us. Running around, always rushed, always late. I guess that's why they call it the 'human race'. What we crave most in this world, is connection. And for some people it happens at first sight. It's, 'When you know, you know.' It's fate, working its magic. And that's great for them. They get to live in a pop song, ride the express train. But that's not the way it really works. For the rest of us, it's a bit less romantic. It's complicated and it's messy. It's about horrible timing and fumbled opportunities, and not being able to say what you need to say, when you need to say it.

--Jason Bateman, "The Switch"

Time. It's the inevitable, fleeting, precious thing of which we never seem to have enough. Our lives get filled up with careers, traffic, deadlines, homework, trips to the gym, grocery shopping, soccer practice, reality shows, and dirty dishes. Perhaps "filled up" isn't the correct choice of words, because I don't believe that it's these things that make our lives "full". A better description would be that our lives are "consumed" by these things-- swallowed up, leaving time for little else that actually implies "living" at all.

It is as if nobody wants to stand still anymore. Why is that? Is it that we feel such a sense of obligation to the things that eat up our time that we can't justify dropping everything in order to really remember what it's like to breathe, and if so, why do we feel such a loyalty to the aspects of our lives that keep us from truly living? We are so hell-bent on moving on to the next thing-- the next job, the next car, the next step-- that we rarely, if ever seem to absorb the step we are currently experiencing in our lives. Equally tragic is when we feel pulled backwards, trapped by the things we can't change, the wrongs we can't right, and we end up caging ourselves to the point that present and future opportunities get blown, or worse yet, go completely unnoticed altogether.

Why does it have to be a race? Do the dishes have to be washed tonight? Are you going to get more out of watching people compete for a million dollars on television, or laying down in the grass, closing your eyes, and listening to the world around you? If you take a day off of work, or blow off an assignment, just for a few hours of happiness, is that a bad thing, in the grand scheme of your life? Why must we make everything so complicated and dramatic? Does that fulfill us somehow?-- No, of course not. It only serves to devour more of our time. As human beings, it's as if we have become obsessed, and it's not with the good stuff.

However, if we're lucky, and if we're aware, we can make those almost magical connections that make life more inspiring. We can find ourselves relating to a song, crying over a television commercial, meeting someone who challenges us, or feeling at home in a new city. I believe that the reason we crave connection is because it always leads to self-growth, and sadly so many of us put self-growth on the back-burner to far less important things that demand our time. We become stuck in the past or so focused on the future that we forget that the present is where it's at. The past is done, and the future may never happen, so the here and now is really all we have.

This has been my soap-box for years. The fact that so many of us take the present so much for granted, mostly because life isn't perfect, and yet we all seek that pristine life that doesn't exist-- the pop song. Even when we're fortunate enough to have those pop song moments, we grow dissatisfied with their staying power, instead of appreciating how lucky we were to have them in the first place. Life is complicated, and it is messy, and that's awesome, not scary. Timing sometimes blows and then opportunities pass us by, but rather than learn from those things, we tend to ignore them, and keep holding out for the good stuff-- for that perfect timing that better fits our obligations or baggage. We miss the message entirely and lessons go unlearned until it's all one big blur, and we're left realizing how much we missed out on, wishing we would've taken that complicated, messy, ill-timed ride.

There are no "do-over's"-- there are "do now's" and "be now's". In a life of take-it-or-leave-it, I, for one, would much rather take it, good or bad. Fear of the future shouldn't rule us, and neither should regrets of the past. Present. Savor that. (I love the word "savor"-- it implies so many wonderful things). The past and the future only seem to exhaust us, but the present carries with it an energy and beauty that can be found nowhere else. Live for the goosebumps, because they are our bodies' way of letting us know how much we are truly feeling life, inside and out.

It's been an insightful week for me, full of talk and reminders of the brevity of life. I am so grateful that I absorb mine, and I encourage you all to do the same. You just never know.

(This video is so full of the energy and beauty that we should all harness from the present).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLqHDhF-028