As I stare at the text book I should be studying, and am half way down the page before I wake from my stupor long enough to find I have no idea what I just read. My mind has been replaying parts of the conversation I was a moment ago apart of.
"You and I have the same problem," she had said. "We tend to live in the future forgetting the importance of the present. We worry about tomorrow not paying attention to what is happening today."
As that thought sinks deeper and deeper into my consciousness and I recognize the truth in it, memories flash through my mind. Decisions I have made based on a nonexistent future, or moments I have grasped the power of purely experiencing.
As the thoughts wrestle around in my mind and I allow myself to wander through the halls of my own experience, I become more and more shocked at how few times I have ever truly lived as if that moment was the only moment that mattered. How seldom I have let myself become enraptured by a feeling so powerful, not because it is extraordinary for any reason, but because I let myself fall victim to it.
I am a perpetual child believing that the next year, the next birthday will bring greater joy to my life. That I will be okay... then. When I don't know, but then to be sure, whenever then is, I will be happy. I will be together, I will be joyful. I will have my dreams then. I will have done the things I wanted, accomplished more.
I have been living for the future so much, I never realized that it was the present that made the future. I guess it's easier to dream of the future than to make it. It's simpler to hide behind "tomorrow" than it is to move today.
There is a certain allowance for abdicating of responsibility if the due date is perpetually a year away. It takes courage to live in the here and now, to accept the accountability of the moment. The power of the decisions of everyday to accomplish what is before you and jump off the cliff of risk that is before me now, not tomorrow, is the hard part. How often have I used the excuse of lack of time, then regretted the loss of time?
Not only have I robbed myself of a future by denial of the present, but I have robbed my heart of the experiences of today.
I looked over at the calender that my sister gave me for Christmas. In big red letters I marked off the days before I get to go back to California and see friends, family and the love of my life. I sit staring at it looking not at the day I go home, but everyday in between, the ones I have marked off as unimportant. I wonder, what will happen those days? I wonder what decisions I will make.
For the first time, I look around my apartment and really look at it. Not that I haven't before, but this time I really look. This is where I live. These are my things, collected through years and days. Evidence of my existence is everywhere, yet, I feel as though I am separate from my surroundings. As if I am living in a dream and this is what my imagination has come up with.
With a start, I realize, this isn't a dream. This is my life, and time is slipping away.
Immediately I jump up to grab the calender. I look at the dates and the markings. If I stop pretending that happiness will come when I reach that date, but if real life starts now, what does that mean?
I guess it means that this moment is full of every possibility that scares the crap out of me. It means that the longing I feel will just have to stay with me until it is no longer. It means the pain of missing someone means I have to ignore the possibilities of joy and excitement and adventure of today.
It means I owe it to a heart that has been bruised too many times to nurse it back to health through allowing it to breathe. It means my fear will have to faced, and not put off until tomorrow. It means I will have to come face to face with what I am capable of, and that which is and will always be out of my reach. It means I will have to accept responsibility of this time and this day and make it worth it.
It also means if I don't leave in the next five minutes I am going to be late for class.
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