Are you present?

The day was heading towards dusk. I watched the clean sea water embrace the muddy waves, uncomplaining. Sitting near the beach, I was contemplating about the direction of my life. It was one of those occasional moments, where I dip in and out of faith that my future is being taken care of.

While sunsets are always beautiful, that evening, the sunset particularly seemed like a vision to behold. Ironically, dwelled in future worries, I wasn’t caring even one bit about the soothing scenery in front of me.

“I can’t seem to figure out how things will work out,” I spoke to my friend sitting next to me.

“That which you’re worried about has not come yet, it might never, “ he said. "Right now, all you have with you is this beautiful, natural scenery, yourself and me. When the time to make any move will arrive, then spend your energy on it,” with a straight face he replied.

“If you will keep on living in the present, future will never arrive,” my friend said.

His words struck my mind, with a thud. He said those words, casually, in jest. But perhaps, he never realized what a profound statement he had made, unintentionally.

It’s not that he told me something I didn’t know or follow in my life. Ofcourse I do. However, I’m no stranger to succumbing to existential anxieties, once in a while. So, I probably needed to be reminded of my own rule. That’s the way of the Universe, I guess. It nudges us back on track if we start to get derailed, provided we’re willing to listen.

Yes, when the entire focus would be on the present moment, and we would be busy living and managing the present day priorities, the so called future which has got nothing to do with reality, will never come.

Now, this does not mean that we will never age, or things won’t fade, break, decay or grow old. It simply means, the fears and anxieties attached to those events may never come true. We’re going to witness the future also as the present and it would have no special (read exaggerated) features attached to it.

After talking to many people on this subject and also recounting my own experiences, I have come to believe that anything existing in our imagination, is always amplified - joy, love, sorrow or anxiety. So, if we’re worried about something in the present, its possibility in future would feel even scarier. We might be petrified by a confrontation with someone in future. However, when the moment actually arrives, we pull it off anyway, and mostly don’t feel as scared as we’d been feeling. Similarly, if we await a joyous event, our minds start weaving all sorts of fancies and attach expectations from the same, in no time. Sometimes the event goes better than what we had imagined. However, a mind over-brimming with expectations often fails to relish the joy of the moment, when it arrives.

The present moment always supplies you with enough courage and strength, to live it in the best possible way. That whether to accept that dose of courage or waste the moment frantically in panic, is what we decide. The power, ultimately lies in our own hands.

As I was engaged in conversation with my friend, a man selling tea, walked towards me. I bought two cups of tea. As I closed my wallet after paying him 20 bucks for the tea, my phone beeped. Someone had sent me a quote by Benjamin Franklin, on Whatsapp.

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of,” it said.

Time is nothing but what is ticking and passing by, every second, now in the present. Past is a memory, which we experienced as the present moment, at one point. That whether we lived it well or not, determines if we had a joyous or a gloomy past. As for future, it exists only in our minds, and will also be experienced by us, someday, as the present.

The Universe hides so many jewels within it for us to find and unveil, everyday. So, the key is to regard our present really as a present from the Universe, a gift if anything it is.

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