The struggle to live in the present moment

My mind has this clever way of pulling me everywhere except the present. Particularly when the present is full of decisions, uncertainties, unmet expectations, or just busyness. I’m drawn into what happened in the past and how I can fix things, or what lies ahead and how I can plan for success (or avoid hardship, as if this was even possible!) Especially when the present feels hard.

Can I get some head nods here? How many of us truly live in the present more than we live in the past or future? Isn’t this odd… how we can live anywhere but the present when the present is actually all we have.

We’re tricked into thinking that the future has something better for us if we only work hard enough to get there. I do this all the time. I get excited about a possibility or an opportunity and then fixate on it, narrowing my vision on what I need to do to get there, sometimes at the expense of everything else in my life that’s good and worthy too. I then realize that this thing I wanted and worked so hard for doesn’t fully satisfy. There’s always more to do and more to reach for. More to accomplish and more goals to meet.

Ugh, it’s exhausting. This “balance” between longing and wanting and working, and resting, enjoying, and just savoring. The tension, and relief, in being versus doing.

We also get stuck in patterns of the past. Thoughts of what we could have done differently or mistakes we made can feel so sticky and hard to let go of. We then create extra thoughts about ourselves that leave us that much more entrapped.

Oh, how often we live anywhere but the present, stuck in the “should’s” and “what-if’s.”

There’s no better place than the present

No matter what my mind tries to tell me, or what it pulls me towards, I find there’s no better place than the present. When we can truly sink into our experience in the moment, with gratitude and grace, life feels full in the very best way. The striving ceases and the worry feels less consuming, even if just for a moment. There’s a heaviness and a lightness all at once.

As I write this, my 2 year old daughter is taking a nap next to me. I treasure the experience of listening to her body breathing, her curls springing from her face. She’s living such a full and joyful life. As kids, we often we wish we were grown up, doing all the “cool” grown-up things. Then, once we get to be adults, we wish we were kids again. She’s even started to tell me, “When I get older I will [do this cool thing that bigger people do]…”

I tell her to not rush it. To just love the moment she’s in. That one day, she will have the opportunity. It will come as life always does.

Some days, I need to hear this too.

In the present, there is joy and beauty. Sometimes, there is pain here. But the pain is more bearable when we just sit with it instead of trying to escape or judge it.

When we are truly present we can better listen to others and to ourselves.

We can listen to the longings of our soul and the needs of our body.

We are more in touch with the Spirit, led by love rather than grasps for control.

We make wiser decisions based on a thoughtful response rather than an impulsive reaction (let me tell you, I’ve made sooo many of those and they feel icky on the other side).

In the present, we might even find a bit more guidance and a little more peace.

All we have is the present. All we have is this moment that we are in. Everything else is uncertain and quite possibly a grasp for something more. The something “more” is never enough, and the chase only wears us out and robs us of the joy in front of us.

God is here in the present. He’s as close now, in this moment, as he’s ever been. The present moment is where he speaks and where he loves.

In the present there is nothing that needs to be done. No planning that needs to happen, nothing that needs to be fixed or solved.

Just a breath to be breathed and a life to be lived.

There’s no better place than the moment-by-moment pace of the present.