If life is a box of chocolates, I should be enjoying the one I am eating.
Wondering what ordinary days would be like if more energy was consumed in experiencing the current moment? Not thinking about the next thing or the last thing, but the present thing. Does this make for a better person?
For a simple example: tonight when a hostess put two forks in my take-out, I wouldn't have wondered as I walked home if she thought the quantity I'd ordered was enough to share, if I looked like I wouldn't be eating alone, if she was absent-minded, if she wasn't concerned about wasting the restaurants supplies, if she thought I'd recycle them, or or or...but seriously the placement of 2 forks vs. 1. Preposterous. That deserved no investment of time. I would have moved on to enjoying the festive feel of downtown during the holiday season, the liberty of breathing the crisp night air on a free evening, feeling the base emotion I see in the street beggars eyes....I don't know.
Thinking about thinking....isn't there a word for that? I'll stop. But the goal of finding the present remains.
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On finding the present - If I may say - I remember thinking as a young man watching the tourist whoosh past my ever-so-slow farm tractor - and on out of sight - "Was he ever really here? Sure he'll tell his friends and family about driving through Central Washington - I imagine words like 'long', boring',and dusty', but was he ever here? really here?" Now I sometimes wonder, "Am I really here? right now?" Or are thoughts about the past and the future strangling my living in the present? Your Grandmother Aleta had a few stones placed here and there around her home - "TODAY"
Yeah, I've heard of people who master that thing of living in the moment and truly being 'present'! So far I'm not one of them but maybe that will be a task for the year ahead.
I don't know if those thoughts were a waste of time. You are naturally wired to be interested in human behavior and what makes people do what they do.There's nothing wrong with that. I think maybe we should give ourselves a break sometimes and not always try to be a different person than we are, unless we are bettering ourselves ethically or some such. Maybe I just don't get it, but I think this live in the moment stuff is just a bunch of Oprah-type garbage. If a person is so shallow they are just living in the present and reacting to their experiences and not taking time to contemplate the myriad of intricacies that go into every moment of life and interaction with others, then what do they gain? Not the "present." For that is what it takes to appreciate the present, time. Ironic, isn't it?
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