What Living in the Present Feels Like to Most of Us - Preserving Our Unity
Live in the present, forget about the past, dream about the future, work for the future today, picture yourself today as tomorrow's winner, keep on working the best is yet to come... not without a certain level of concern we are continuously bombarded by these self-help phrases, catchy phrases that roll off the tongue easily, feel-good promises that tomorrow will be better, that invite to willfully ignore or to drown that past painful, sorrowful, awful experience under mounds of positive messages, that promise nothing but wholesome goodness, powerful messages of overcoming, evolving into a mighty lion/tiger/dragon, warrior, god/goddess, a mighty hero blaring a legendary horn that will vanquish and defeat all odds and enemies, self-created, imaginary or invested by our own struggling mind, that foe that keeps us from attaining that coveted price, that success that we rightfully deserve and has been negated by a villainous being or evil natured enemy, no matter what angle or scope we take, there is this adversarial force opposing our sincere good-natured efforts, why if we are good, do we struggle so much to get to that price?
Living in the present is, hands-down, a must, though not as a stage in our evolution to higher grounds, though as a natural state of our ever present continuous existence, nothing dramatic, being in the present moment entails the acceptance of our very human experience where our current "être" is the evolution of a series of actions and reactions unchained by our own interactions with the world, be it by thought, word, or action... every single notion that passes our brain has the potential of generating a thought or idea, that by volition, has the potential to be transformed into words or actions, which the moment that are executed, unleash a series of events that we will not have the ability or power to control, out the window goes the warrior/lion/hero, enter entropy and quantum mechanics, we are an immense concentration of energy packets that affect our surroundings whether we like it or not. This brings us to responsibility and taking ownership of our actions, present becomes past a couple of seconds after we execute our deeds, well-thought of or not, hence the concatenation of actions and reactions with its consequences, be it pleasant or unpleasant, remark how I shy away from calling consequences "good" or "bad", I would dare to say this is our own perception given our expectations, and there is a profound temptation to finger point when things go contrary to our expectations and to beam when they go our way...
There is an intrinsic danger to not accepting the consequences of our actions, we can progressively become entangled in a web of our own half-truths and invented surreal projected machinations that make us lose sight of the world around us and eventually become paranoid about innocuous and common life situations and people that surround us, and embark in a crusade to destroy, conquer and vanquish that self-perceived menace, this behaviour is self-destructive and alienating. A concerning trend has been evolving where in general, any person self-diagnoses through applications and social media tests, without truly having a professional diagnosis, which has the unwanted consequence of convincing the person that they are suffering ADHD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, or are "empaths", term hijacked from Star Trek's Deanna Troi, or even more concerning... become experts on diagnosing other people's mental health states without having the experience, resources or credentials, "labelling" family and friends as suffering narcissistic personality disorders, or borderline personality disorders, or sociopathic disorders without fully understanding the multilayer approach that psychology and psychiatry take to diagnose such delicate maladies and the breadth of time dedicated to accurately define the depth and seriousness of these illnesses.
The importance of defining our present selves is remarked by the facts that we are a consequence of our past actions, hence the importance of learning how to self-regulate to better manage our emotional waves, be it by means of breathing exercises, guided mindful meditation, physical activity, or grounding exercises.
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It is important to self regulate strong highs and lows to maintain a healthy balanced outlook on life, trying to keep and emotionally heightened state as a means to keep ourselves motivated will only set us up for failure since at some point we will come down, and once we fall, we will begin the search for the adverse situation or foe that's responsible for our fall from grace, that monster that doesn't want us to succeed, that is pouncing and attentive to our success so that just at the last minute, when we are about to win... we fail, we are mysteriously sabotaged, but since we know the culprit, we get busy and severe ties to those situations and people that "are holding us back", another self-pitying, self-defeating, self-victimizing phrase, that sets us up for the next disappointment, when we realise that we are ending-up alone, and we blame that lack of support and success at being abandoned, then the cycle is repeated by the search of new fresh allies and resources that "truly get it", they know the struggle, they "empathise", they can be trusted, and the cycle repeats itself.
We are the consequences of our own actions, and as human beings, we navigate a world of uncertainty, a world where, if we move too fast we run the risk of missing out or unwittingly injuring ourselves or our loved ones, that is why one of the factors that hold great potential to support us in our daily lives is to slow down and ponder, think, and evaluate our actions, their potential consequences and if we already have experience on previous similar situations, evaluate if the possible outcome is something that we will be able to handle or that we want for ourselves, how much deeper we want to dig ourselves into a marshy situation and further erode and destroy our souls or whether we decide that enough is enough and that is moment to stop, retrace and retake a more wholesome, slow and thoughtful path, that might feel somewhat uncomfortable, but that will help us keep on living a better human experience while we develop resilience surrounded by people and situations that will support us no matter what. This how I propose the use of present consciousness while tapping carefully into the past to analyse and to a certain degree "foretell" the future to attenuate any impact, be it "pleasant" or "painful".
Cherish your past for it is your life's story, treasure it and tap into it as a historic reference to build experience and resilience, that experience will become like a crystal ball that will help you better live and navigate the world without aimlessly bouncing around while exposing yourself to potentially harmful situations.