It is both amazing and sad how much time we as humans spend lost in thought, distracted, and fixated on some worry from the past or in the future. I’d venture to say that the vast majority of the time we fail to realize how often we are being controlled and dominated by our thoughts, worries, and fears. The way we are raised and the unconscious assumptions that society imprints on us have very powerful, long-lasting effects on the way we live day by day, moment to moment, likely because of how young we were when this conditioning first began.
Some of the most prevalent forms of thinking and unconscious assumptions are that we must worry incessantly about the future if we wish to be successful, that we must worry about how others perceive us if we wish to be accepted, that you will find completion and fulfillment in the future, and that on your own and by yourself you are not enough, instead you need material possessions, social status, physical stimulation, and external validation in order to feel good and to be whole.
A lot of this or even all of this likely stems from a void problem, an existential dread that your life is meaningless, or an unconscious self-hate. This may sound drastic, but you can see this in people who can’t stand to be sober, by themselves, present and still. Instead they must stimulate and distract themselves from reality and the present moment.
Your thoughts and regrets about the past are merely memories, the past itself does not exist anymore and cannot be changed. (Not to mention your memories decay and become distorted.) Your worries about the future are purposeless, because the future does not exist and the only place in which you can take steps to creating a better future is right here, right now, in the present moment.
There’s nothing you need to escape because everything you need you already have and is within you. Real beauty is right between your two ears and lies in your experience and perception of the world.
You don’t need to distract yourself from anything, especially since fulfillment, joy, gratitude, and authentic happiness exist in your experience of the present moment. It’s the only thing that ever really exists and is ever truly real, so you might as well embrace it in its entirety.
Stop hiding from life, from reality. Stop letting the present moment and life pass you by. Stop living in your head. Embrace life, embrace feeling fully and experiencing fully, embrace self-love and self-acceptance, and be precisely the person that you want to be. You’ve got only one life after all.
“The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There’s only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment.” – Buddha
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson