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Today's
Meditation:
One of the traits that I grew up with as an adult
child of an alcoholic was that of not trusting the
future-- much of what I did in life was brought on by my
tendency to think that things weren't going to be okay in
my life, so I tried to do everything I could to make sure
that they didn't go wrong. In other words, instead
of enjoying the present moment, I was always trying to
make sure that things didn't go badly tomorrow. As
far as I can recall, my efforts never worked. And I
wasted a lot of sunshine.
I know plenty of other people who find themselves in that
boat. For whatever reason, they're so focused on
making sure that they don't get laid off next week that
they're not able to focus on the job they're doing
today. Ironic, isn't it? Or they're so sure
that the relationship they're in is going to fail that
instead of enjoying the other person's company, they're
constantly trying to manipulate feelings and emotions and
events to make sure that the other person doesn't want to
leave. . . or won't leave even if they want to.
One of the more interesting things that I've found over
the years is that many, many people like to be around
people who are enjoying the present moment. And when
I'm fully engaged in the present, I don't spend time
thinking about what may happen in the future, so
what I do now is more enjoyable, and the results are of
higher quality. Even though that voice inside me
sometimes rebels and tries to force me to make
preparations for the future, I'm able to discern between
the silly voice that's trying to distract me and the
logical voice that makes sense.
After all, sometimes we do need to prepare for the
future. If we're taking a vacation in the coming summer,
then we need to put aside money so that we can enjoy
ourselves, don't we? But when we spend too much time
focused on things that may happen and ways to prevent mere
possibilities from becoming reality, we squander the
quality moments that we could be having right here, right
now.
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