A life with missed presents has no future

“Forever – is composed of Nows,” wrote Emily Dickinson. The past too is composed of nows. It is in the present that you read this, but soon it will be in the past. A few hours from now, you may not even remember reading this. That now which was the present just became the past. The past was once the present. The future, that murky distant unknown future, will soon become the present, someday will become today.

The present is a gift, many have said. You can either make the most of it or try to get through it. You either live or you survive. Sadly, too many forget the present, and immerse themselves too deep in the future.

Ask an O/L student what his plans are. Most would list out each step, pass their O/L’s and A/L’s in a particular stream, finish course after course in some already chosen university and finally work for a pre-decided company. Ask them what they would do if a step does not work out as planned, and many of them will not have a Plan B. They live in the future, as uncertain as it is.

In lower grades school assignments included the terrifying essays on your dream profession. Students wanted to be doctors, lawyers or engineers. Today, the very people who had those dreams are in completely different fields. You can’t predict life in anyway. Nothing is promised. Some find it easy to accept the unexpected. Some don’t have plans, no Plan A or B and they drift along with the wind. They allow let life take them to places. Such people are rarely disappointed by life. They don’t worry about what will happen ten years from now. They live in the present. By doing so, they live each moment to its fullest.

There was a man, old, hair greying. Clothes dirty. His face, unshaven for at least a month. He had most probably lost his senses following a tragic incident, or just due to old age. He had this white, perfectly new soccer ball with him. It wasn’t fully blown up, one side caving in. He kept throwing it up and catching it while crossing the road and then kicked it up with his knee when he got to the other side of the road. It was a gloomy day, the rain clouds taking over. The sight of this man just washed away the darkness. It reminded me that while at 19 I was battling the first steps into adulthood, he, probably in his 60’s is doing something that today’s children rarely do.

He wasn’t looking into tomorrow, or the end the week. He was living that moment. The smile on his face was a proof enough that for him, life couldn’t get any better. We miss such moments because we are too involved in the future to stop for a moment and savor the beauty of the present. We make too many plans for the future. We have too many hopes, and when our dreams don’t come true in that future we had so much faith in, we feel lost and realize what we have been missing in life.

We are young only once, and while attitudes like YOLO-You Only Live Once are often misused, make the most of today. Go do something you have always wanted to; next week you may not have the time and five years from now you will regret not having done it. “It is better to have loved and lost. Than never to have loved at all,” Tennyson wrote. It is also better to have lived and experienced life than to let it just go on.

Don’t keep looking back into the past. Nothing will come out of it. Don’t run into the future. Live in the today you have been blessed with.

http://www.nation.lk/edition/lifestyle/item/18112-a-life-with-missed-presents-has-no-future.html

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