In the comments on my post about Obama, there was some talk about how the election seemed to be a lot about hope.
Hope is a peculiar thing. Hope is the idea that we need to endure to find out that in the future, everything is going to get better, but if you look at the life you have lived, you will probably find that things has gone up and down, and we usually think things are still not good enough and need to be improved.
Most people is constantly thinking about the past and the future. We feel guilty and regret things we have done in the past, because we are anxious that it will mean bad consequences for our life, and then we worry about what will happen in the future, because we don’t know, and things might turn out ugly. To cope with this we invent concepts such as hope. Hope, that despite our past (which is not usually as bad as we think), things might turn out pretty good or even better. What we tend to forget is that when we focus on the past and the future, the life we live now just goes by without us even noticing it.
The old saying ”the grass is always greener on the other side” fits very well with this. We always think things might be better somewhere else but here. We might be reasonably happy, but always keep a foot in the door just in case something better turns up. This can clearly be seen around you in this consumer society we live in (in myself too), in that as soon as you have bought something new, a cell phone, a computer or a new car, we start planning for the next thing that will replace it. (I want an iPhone by the way because the cell phone I have now is more than six months old, so if anyone got one, send it to me ?).
A zen-buddhist monk told the story of how a man was out walking and decided that when he got home, he would eat a peach. He started to imagine how this peach would taste, the sweetness, the juice and how it would feel to put his teeth in it. He so vividly imagined the peach, that he totally missed the beautiful landscape around him. When he reached his house, he wanted the peach so badly, that he went straight to the table, took the peach and ate it.
Since he had already experienced the peach so vividly in his mind, he was already done with it, and while he was eating it, he started thinking about what he would do next, and before he knew, he had finished the peach and was going about the next thing.
This is basically how most people live their lives. Thinking about what to do next even before finishing what we are doing now or thinking about all the good or bad times we’ve had in our lives, so we completely forget what is happening around us. And therefore misses to actually live life as it is.
Peter Englund, a Swedish historian who is also a member of the board of the Swedish Academy. The same Academy that is responsible for nominating scientists for the Nobel Prize, was interviewed in a magazine I read a couple of years ago. He is one of the foremost academics in Sweden, yet he thought that living in the Now was a bit overrated, after all, you hve to plan sometimes too.
To live in the Now moment is not about not planning and thinking about the past, but rather to Be here right now. Present.
Lets look at Now for a moment. Can you at anytime in your life not be here now? You could say that yesterday you are not here now, but yesterday you were in the Now of yesterday, and the only reason you now that there was ever an yesterday, is because you have a memory of it. Now.
In the same way, living in the future is also impossible. The only way you experience the future, is by imagining it Now.
You are always stuck in the Now moment. Whether you want to or not. The problem is probably that you don’t want to be stuck in the Now moment, because it can be quite unpleasant if you’re not used to it, and therefore you get caught up in Thinking about the past or the future. You think about it. Now. Instead of Being, Now.
We do miss this obvious often. Even clever people like Peter Englund misses it, because he thinks that planning takes place somewhere outside of Now.
You can only Be Here Now.
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