The Present

"If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

After all, the future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner or later, it is going to become the present. Thus to plan for a future which is not going to become present is hardly more absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to me, will find me “absent,” looking fixedly over it’s shoulder instead of into its face."

-Alan Watts from "The Wisdom of Insecurity"

I have been thinking a lot about "the present" recently. More so now than for a few years (perhaps since I was in Tanzania in 2006) I am finding myself happily and easily in the present. Walking down to school, my timbuk2 bag slung across my shoulder, rain boots slopping in Londony puddles, I am so very much here....in time and space. I am not dreaming about any other time or place in which I could be or was happier. Not that there is nothing I could worry about, but I am becoming more aware that the key to the future is the present. If I am not present in the now then the future will never become what I want it to be. By being here now, I actually am investing in my future. It is like the quote I posted in the blog titled 'Priory Park.' Right actions now, lead to positive outcomes. "Right actions" are not mysterious highly rational choices, but rather the actions your heart suggests (not so delicately at times).

Very rarely is anything, any decision, as complex as we believe it to be, if we just listen to what our hearts tell us. Stresses arise when our heart, mind and actions are not aligned. The closer we can bring these elements to alignment, the less stress we feel; we near equilibrium. I have found (am finding?) that if I base my actions on my heart, my mind will catch up. Past experience and observation, though, have revealed to me that the same is not true of the mind. That is, if I base my actions on my mind, my heart will not easily comply if it did not in the first place agree. The more open I am to hearing my heart's voice, feeling its pull, the more often I listen to its direction, the more confident I become in believing what it tells me. It is like any sense, or skill, the more you use it the better it becomes. The more I listen, the more I hear.