Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to live in the present moment.  – Thich Nhat Hanh

Our culture is firmly focused on what’s next. We all worry about what’s to come, today, next week, next year. We wonder how will we get there, what it will be like, if everything will be okay, will we lose our job, get sick, divorce, and on it goes. There are a zillion details, innumerable things that could transpire that make it impossible to know exactly what will be. When we get caught up in calculating or trying to avoid them it creates anxiety.

What we need to do is follow Ram Dass’ instruction from so many years ago, be here now. Isn’t it enough if in this moment we are safe, settled, happy, whole, peaceful, or any combination of the above? This is the only moment we can know and have a say in, now is the only place where we can cultivate what’s meaningful and create a deeper sense of belonging. All we have is where we are now. The question is where do we find ourselves in the present moment.

Since now is all we’ve really got, we waste our precious time and energy being everywhere else but here. When we are stuck worrying about what we’ve done or may do, what’s happened or may happen, we cheat ourselves out of the richness and depth of the current moment. Now offers us the power of choice. We construct our lives in every second of the now, we build what is to come by the life we create right now. Daydreaming, languid thinking, and planning are one thing, obsessing is quite another. Overthinking and planning for the endless things that may never come at all leaves us in limbo, we are neither in the now nor in the future moment. Everyone jokes about the zombie apocalypse, but I tell you it’s already here. It’s us sleepwalking through our lives day after day.

Of course we will all worry at times, and at this time of heightened panic that worry is front and center. But to let it overwhelm us every moment of the day is to lose our lives and everything that really is okay, or maybe even fantastic. The truth is how we handle this moment is how we handle all the moments in our lives.

If we can open to the present moment we have the ability to change our lives. Because the more we embrace the moment we’re in, the more we see the reality of what actually is, not the fabrication of what if or the diversion of if only. The more awake we are to the present moment the more power we have to build something of substance that will help us embrace all the moments we move into, no matter what they may bring. Life has many seasons and they all deserve our full attention as they come.

None of us know what the future will bring, there’s a good chance there’ll be a little bit of everything. All we can control is how we are in the moment of now, embrace and open to it’s mysteries and what is offered. If we can do that, we’ll be better able to handle what comes, as it comes, with more ease. We’ll be well practiced in honoring what life brings instead of being stuck in the anxiety of what may or may not ever happen.

So, where are you now?

kb