This is a thought inspired by the writer Dale Carnegie who wrote the book ‘Stop worrying and start living,’ and especially I hope useful for your Monday morning.
Lets just pretend the two of us are standing together right at this very second in time and we can look back on the time-line of our lives, the distant past that seems so unconnected to now, and then we turn and watch our future disappear into the furthest distance…
But right now in this moment of time we are here, the meeting place of our past and what will be later today, then tomorrow and beyond… into forever.
But we can never be in any other place than this moment, we cannot possibly live in the past, even if our mind attempts to do that, neither can we step into the future, we may try, but we only succeed in doing one thing and that is not living for today… so we wreck our lives, our mind becomes confused and depressed; stressed is a great word for it, we collapse under the burdens of all our yesterdays and the fearful tomorrows they created.
So the answer then is to live for today, or more importantly for now, right at this place we are standing together.
Yes some of today may involve reviewing the past or planning what we choose for tomorrow, but there is never an excuse for doing that with fear and regret.
Today, or right now is the time to live, it is not a time for pointless worry about the future, because that is what we will eventually create, and we must stop… right now fretting over the clangers we have made along that time-time that is all of our yesterdays.
I remember saying to my son as he grew to be the wonderful young man that makes me so proud to be his Father, and like all children, almost as I reversed from the drive, he would ask… ‘Dad, are we nearly there yet?’ So together we would mark our distance between mileposts, we would look for something familiar, and when we saw it we would look for the next and the one after that, it broke the journey into pieces and soon we were at our destination, of course it probably involved a substantial bar of chocolate along the way too.
We can do the same with our lives… break all of our ‘NOWS into the present moment, and concentrate only on what we are doing… and inevitably better, more fulfilling tomorrows will follow… does this work, certainly, but the only way you will prove it is by trying it… by living it!
© Simon Lawrence
Lets just pretend the two of us are standing together right at this very second in time and we can look back on the time-line of our lives, the distant past that seems so unconnected to now, and then we turn and watch our future disappear into the furthest distance…
But right now in this moment of time we are here, the meeting place of our past and what will be later today, then tomorrow and beyond… into forever.
But we can never be in any other place than this moment, we cannot possibly live in the past, even if our mind attempts to do that, neither can we step into the future, we may try, but we only succeed in doing one thing and that is not living for today… so we wreck our lives, our mind becomes confused and depressed; stressed is a great word for it, we collapse under the burdens of all our yesterdays and the fearful tomorrows they created.
So the answer then is to live for today, or more importantly for now, right at this place we are standing together.
Yes some of today may involve reviewing the past or planning what we choose for tomorrow, but there is never an excuse for doing that with fear and regret.
Today, or right now is the time to live, it is not a time for pointless worry about the future, because that is what we will eventually create, and we must stop… right now fretting over the clangers we have made along that time-time that is all of our yesterdays.
I remember saying to my son as he grew to be the wonderful young man that makes me so proud to be his Father, and like all children, almost as I reversed from the drive, he would ask… ‘Dad, are we nearly there yet?’ So together we would mark our distance between mileposts, we would look for something familiar, and when we saw it we would look for the next and the one after that, it broke the journey into pieces and soon we were at our destination, of course it probably involved a substantial bar of chocolate along the way too.
We can do the same with our lives… break all of our ‘NOWS into the present moment, and concentrate only on what we are doing… and inevitably better, more fulfilling tomorrows will follow… does this work, certainly, but the only way you will prove it is by trying it… by living it!
© Simon Lawrence