Friday, January 17, 2014

Re: Living for the Present


First of all, when I read the title of your blog, this immediately jumped into my head.

Now that we have that out of the way…

I think you're in a good place with your thoughts Brad.  Appreciating the "now" is something of which I think we could all use a little more.  Jennifer and I were having a conversation the other night about our next move, thinking about houses, locations, possibilities, etc.  I actually brought up the fact that I thought there was a danger in obsessing about what is ahead, rather than focusing on what is right now.  Yes, I know that "living in the now" doesn't mean you can forget planning, but when there is always an extreme longing for what may come in the future, it has the potential to induce a sort of dissatisfaction with the present. 

In the Navy, at least when I joined, you could pretty much plan on moving every 2-3 years (due to "homesteading", it's not the case anymore).  There has long been a joke about those kind of Sailors, no matter where they are currently, who believe that their last duty location was the best, the next one will be even better, but their current duty location is the worst.

In her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle observes that people who are tied to social media and texting are never really present wherever they are.  They are longing to be somewhere else with someone else all the time.  Similarly to what I mentioned above, she observes that it causes a malaise with face-to-face relationships. 

Big plans?  Nothing wrong with that, but I applaud your efforts to appreciate the here and now despite looking ahead to bigger and better things.  I think that the regular awareness of what can happen by always looking ahead will prevent you from forgetting to appreciate what you have now.  As in most things, balancing the present and future is the key.

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