I had a thought today about how I’d like to ‘live in the moment’. We were in the park. I stopped walking suddenly, and stared at the trees. Sammy asked me what was wrong, so I started to explain what was going through my head.
I’m too good at looking backwards. I miss the 90s and uni and old friends whose lives have moved on. I miss the way things used to be, when I felt more alive, more awake and more hopeful. I know this, because I write about it often. I don’t think it’s wrong to have memories.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the antidote is to look forwards instead? Yeah, let hope rise in you for the future, all the things you’re going to do, dream about, set your mind on. Often, we rely on the next big thing to fill us with excitement like nothing else. I don’t think it’s wrong to be hopeful either. Hope is really powerful.
You can get stuck though, swinging between those two things. Just as the past is unreachable, the future too has not yet been reached. And that future also has a future, in which you (if life has trained you to do so) will still be dreaming about what’s ahead. I think I’ve suddenly realised how easy it is to get stuck in a loop with an insatiable appetite - the next big thing won’t fill it, and looking back to the last big thing just can’t fill it.
A wind rippled through the wintry branches. We’d noticed that some of them are already bearing sticky buds, face-up to the cold grey sky.
I want to enjoy now.
I don’t want to be longing for a past that’s not coming back. Neither do I want to be so focused on what’s next that I’ve lost sight of who I am today. That’s not the story I want to tell - that my head was in the clouds, that I forgot to keep my feet on the ground. These are the golden days, whatever’s happening, right now. I don’t want to lose them.
It’s difficult isn’t it? Sammy and I are planning a life together, and it’s all yet to come. What will our house look like? How will we spend time with family? What will our values be? What will we say no to and why? What kind of kitchen table do we want, and who do we want around it? These are all questions about the future, our future, and I get it - there’s lots to be excited about! I just don’t want to be so consumed by the next thing that when the next thing becomes the current thing, the current thing is a past thing I spent dreaming about the next thing rather than enjoying it. I want better memories than that.
So, how do you do it? How do you stop and take a moment? How do you breathe, thankful for today, for this point on the journey? How do you recognise how far you’ve come without losing sight of where you are? How do you live in the moment?
January should be all about this, I reckon - the looking forward, the looking back. And also the golden days in between. I think it starts with breathing, with walking through the park and feeling the soft sticky buds on the brittle arms of the trees. I think it means listening to the wind, or watching the clouds race by overhead. It’s the tingle of a spot of rain, or the smile of the sun. I want to pause in the now - because the now, every now (even the ones that are tough going) are awesome.
Sammy pointed out that kids know this instinctively - hence why time moves slower for them. I agreed. They have an intrinsic ability to be excited by what’s happening right now, as well as what might happen next. That’s why parks like ours have swings and roundabouts in them - those things create joy in the moment for little people who still know how to whoop and holler, as well as look forward to birthdays and Christmas. Excitement is absolutely not owned by the future; joy is not a province of the past.
That was my New Year’s Day thought. Later, I went to my parents’ house for dinner and just sat with them for a while. I tried hard to talk about things in the present, rather than the past or future - how much I was enjoying the smoked mackerel, how beautiful the candle is, how mild the weather is today for this time of year. I don’t know whether it helped. It’s not always practical of course - especially when you have a wedding to plan!
Nonetheless, I think there’s something in it. After all, the one thing they say about wedding days themselves is that they always fly by so fast, as if part of a dream. Then raising children - blink and it’s gone so fast, they say, and they’re grown up and making their own families. I want to enjoy every last second of the adventure. I want to savour the moments passed, and hope for the ones yet to come, knowing that each of the golden days we had is a glistening memory in the treasure house, and that I made the most of it.
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