Awareness Of The Now

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.”

James Thurber


When you focus your attention on what’s in front of you, yesterday’s problems feel a lot less catastrophic and tomorrow’s uncertainty seems a lot less scary.
It’s not easy to live in the now because obsessing over yesterday and stressing about tomorrow can seem like gaining control. If only you can analyze yesterday enough, maybe you can make sense of it. If only you can plan for tomorrow enough, maybe you can decide what will happen.
Accept neither of those things are universally true.

There will never come a time when we feel completely done with the past or secure with the future, but eventually we have to consent to let it all go regardless.
We can either use our hours thinking about the ones that have past and the ones that are coming, or we can dig our heels into the moment and choose not to let it slip away. Because it will, as will the next, and the next, and the next until eventually they run out.

Today if you find yourself rehashing, assessing, or worrying, ask yourself this question: what would I gain if I sacrificed the illusion of control and instead rooted myself firmly in the now?