“To prove my case, do you think humans were designed to live in the present, the past, or the future?”
Mack hesitated. “The present?”
“Relax, Mack.” Jesus chuckled. “This isn’t a test, it’s a conversation. So now where do you spend most of your time, in your imagination? The present, the past, or the future?”
(Paraphrased from The Shack)
I’m realizing that, most of the time, I’m thinking about the future – what I’m going to do, what I want to do, what I want to have done… But lately I’ve been thinking about this idea of living in the moment. Until recently, I never really knew what it meant.
The other day, Sean, Prang, and Cindy were whooping my butt at Phase 10. I was being my typical competitive, pouty self and getting very upset. Then I thought, “Why am I doing this? What’s important here, right now?”
I looked around the table and realized it’s the people that were important. I always knew this, in sort of a head way, but that was the first time it ever made sense to my heart. Suddenly I didn’t care about the game. I was just happy to be with my family. It was weird.
It got weirder. I could totally see how people were being extra careful around me when something bad would happen in the game. I could see how terrible it was when my kids would ask to play with me and I’d get all annoyed because, of course, I have other things I “need” to do.
It’s like, I know this stuff. I’ve always known, but I’m only now starting to see what it looks like.
Later that night, I was taking a shower. As usual, I was thinking about everything I had to do the next day or that week, but I stopped myself. I was like, “Okay, so what does it mean to live in the moment now? What am I doing?” Well nothing, but I found myself enjoying time to relax, the feel of the water on my body, clean clothes. While brushing my teeth, I noticed all the things on the counter – Cindy’s conditioning gel, her contact solution. I realized why I never seem to know little details about my own wife, like what brand of contact solution she used. I didn’t care; my mind was always somewhere else.
It was like that scene in Equilibrium when Christian Bale takes off his glove and just feels the handrail, like it’s this amazing thing. And it is amazing. It’s like freedom from everything I regret or worry about. None of that matters. All that matters is right now.
I’m still trying to figure all this out. Now that I know what it looks like, I can see I’m not very good at it. My mind is constantly jumping to the next thing. But I know I can get better with practice. If nothing else, I know what the goal looks like now, to live in the moment.
