Focus on what is

 

We have this tendency to slip out of the now and either worry about what is coming or focus on what has been.  Especially around the holidays, I think we experience heightened nostalgia as well as a looming sense of concern for the future.  Sometimes we fall into the opposite trap, where we look at the past and only remember the horrible things or we paint the future in some kind of idealistic way (that is often unreasonable).

This can be a very dangerous thing, because too much focus, either good or bad on the past and/or the future drastically influences how we experience the now.  It flavors everything that happens in our lives and often ends up robbing us of being able to be fully present and actually experience what is going on.

When we look to the past and we think of the 'golden days', we are remembering an idealized past.  There hasn't been a time in the past that was magically perfect, and when we think of 'better times' often we are using very closed vision, looking at specific events or remembering certain parts of life...and completely refusing to see what else was going on at the time.

Fact twisting is a common thing, when delving into the past.  When we look back and we decide things were good by looking at a very small set of statistics, we not only set ourselves up for feeling dissatisfied in our current lives, but also we make these unrealistic expectations for the future (since it wasn't actually that way in the past, how could we possibly expect it to be that way in the future?)

Take marriage, for example.  I've heard many people talk about how 'in the olden days' marriages lasted and people didn't just get divorces willy nilly.  Which is statistically true, that divorce rates were very low.  But it's not because marriages in those days were good (of course there are exceptions, there are good marriages in all times, even from crazy starts), it was simply that there were no other options.  If a woman had no access to money, would be branded as some kind of moral and/or social outcast and literally had no place to go...she couldn't leave.  And if both partners needed to be in an altered state (remember that in other times many drugs were readily available) or seeking companionship outside of the marriage bed, or were miserable but stayed married because that was the only option...was that really better?  (Hint:  my answer is no).

When we cherry pick our history like this, we set up unreasonable standards for the present.  If you start with the standpoint that marriage is the golden standard, than you make anyone who has left a marriage (or who hasn't gotten married...or has no desire to get married) feel like they are a failure.  And that's not even dipping my toes into the pool of horror that is the way that we try to regulate who can get married (not just talking about the LGBT+ community, but if you aren't aware of the struggles of disabled people trying to keep their health care and income and get married....well let's just say it's pretty demeaning).

If we look to the past and we see only the worst, if we focus on how hard things were, how bad life was, we can rob ourselves of some really good memories.  Life isn't always just one thing or another.  It is entirely possible for a time to be both good an bad (and surprise, people can be both good and bad as well).  When we forget this, we may feel conflicted when we face the good parts of something we saw as bad, and we may start to feel that those good bits couldn't possibly be right, because it was a bad situation...right?

The danger with this way of thinking is that it seeps into other places, specifically how you feel about yourself and the people close to you.  If I fall prey to the mindset that things are either good or bad, and I recognize the bad habits or choices I've made...I might completely discount the good things because 'obviously' I'm a bad person.  We can also end up making harsh decisions about people in our life, because of previous bad experiences.  When someone does something nice or good, we may not be open to it, because we have already decided they are a bad person, so obviously they can't do anything good.

If we are focused on the future, and we expect everything to fall into ruin, it becomes very hard to stay invested in our daily life.  I mean if everything is going to turn out horrible, why bother?  If your job isn't going anywhere, why should you do more than the bare minimum to not get fired?  If your family is going to hate you, why try to mend those bridges?

Future fatalism is extremely dangerous because it causes us to create the very future we are worried about.  When we stop trying, we stop noticing opportunities.  We don't set ourselves up for success and we see everything as the precursor to something bad.

The funny thing is, seeing the future as impossibly bright sometimes has a similar effect.  If we believe, without any doubt, that the future is going to be amazing, we may not try as hard as we should.  Why should we push if things are going to turn out great no matter what?  It's like if you know you have a big paycheck coming in, you may not work those extra hours, even though you are trying to save up for a luxury purchase.  Your windfall is coming, you just have to wait and everything will be fine.

The thing is, nothing in the future is set in stone, and there is always room for change.  Maybe whatever it was that you were counting on doesn't happen.  Maybe some other thing comes up that changes your circumstances, and now the money that you thought you could spend on whatever you wanted is needed for something else.  

Worse, when we assume the future is going to be bright, we can turn our back on problems that are happening right now.  If we think 'change is coming,' then maybe we don't fight as hard as we should against the injustices that are happening now.  This is especially true if it's something that doesn't directly involve you, as I don't know about you, but as well intended as I might be, I'm much more likely to overlook issues that aren't smacking me in the face.

I think the biggest thing to remember, is that both the past and the future aren't 'real'.  Yes, the past happened, and the future is going to happen.  But the past is inherently flavored with opinion:  the opinions of the people who observed it and recorded it, the opinions of the people talking about it, the opinions of the people hearing about it.  And whatever influence the past might have had on leading you to the now....in the now it has no power over you.  

 

The present is a powerful thing, but all it's power is tied up in what is and what you choose to do with it.  Nothing that happened in the past can change the now...because it's already happened, all it's power is spent.  In this singular moment, all the power lies in your hands...in your ability to decide how you want to respond to what you are presented with.

And the future...well the future is just fantasy.  It is a dream of what we hope or fear will happen.  Dreams can't effect you unless you let them.  You can allow a dream to lead you astray or you can use your dreams to motivate you.  You can get caught up in your dreams and loose track of reality or you can enjoy your dreams and then do what is needed in this moment.

One of the joys of focusing on what is....is that now is both eternal and already changing.  Each fleeting second is gone in the time it takes you to notice it.  If you keep focusing on now, you don't have to worry about the past or the future, because now is keeping you busy.  

Yes, I think there is a time and a place for both the past and the future.  We need to learn about our past, in a way that is balanced and with perspective.  And we need to look to the future so that we can plot a course to aim for.  What we need to avoid is loosing sight of the present.  Because when we forget about now, we loose all our power.