Walking through the city down the sidewalk passing by stores, T J max, Justice, Target. Making my way through pushing shoving crowds of people. Christmas shopping. There was someting about everyones faces something I’ve always seen in the faces of people in the city. A blankness, off in their own world. Brooding on the past or worrying about the future, I can’t tell. But I think that the main thing is they aren’t in the present.
I notice this expression a lot among shoppers in the city but really I’ve come to realize that I see it everywhere to some degree, and I’ve felt it on my own face. So many people don’t live in the present.
Thinking about the future. A busy schedule, trying to figure out how everyone is going to get the party: who’s going with who. Other times we are dreaming, imagining, lost in our future dreams; traveling the world.
Sometimes it’s the past. Replaying a scene over and over. Hurting inside about something that happened to you, lacking the ability to forgive.
Both thoughts of the future and thoughts of the past go hand in hand. A thoughtless act, what will those people think?
So many minutes out of our life we are not living in the present. As people grow older they are less and less in the present. Remember “Become as a little child” ? Maybe part of that is living in the present. Not taking things for granted but enjoying every moment.
It’s really much harder than it seems, to live in the present.
It takes the faith to trust inGod.
It takes the courage to forgive and forget.
It takes the concentraition to control your own thoughts
It takes the strength to pray
It takes the ability to love people the way God loves us, even if we can immitate him to only the smallest degree.
The future is coming no matter what we do, we can’t change that.
Can’t make it go faster: thinking of the future. Can’t make it go backwards: thinking of the past. . As C.S. Lewis put it:
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is”
Thinking in the future is a habit. If all we think about is being a teenager when we’re ten then when we won’t have enjoyed being ten, and when were a teenager we will only think about going to college, instead of enjoying highschool, and when we reach college we won’t be enjoying it, rather we’ll be thinking of when we get married, and when we get married we’ll only think of when we have children, and when there are children we’ll only wait till they are old enough to speak and not cry and when they are older we can’t wait till they are out of the house and we don’t have to worry about what time Sally’s basketball and Bobby’s piano lesson. At some point as an old man or and old woman it will catch up to you: a wasted life. A life of always looking ahead and never enjoying the moment.
In the Bible it says:
This is the day the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.
psalm118:24
Have you ever met someone who lives in the present 100% , who laughs, who hears, who speaks and thinks as if this may be his last moment here on earth?
I have and it was inspiring, it inspired this post.
Live as though this may be your last day. The Bible calls us to be watchful. For the second coming will be when no one will expect it.
Again another quote from my favorite author, C.S. Lewis. “Where except in the present can the Eternal be met?”
Certainly not in our broodings of the past or ponderings of the future.
Living each moment as if it was the last: that is what changes lives for the better.
Happy New Years!
God Bless you!
~Ness
