Living is Clearly Present Tense.

Which means every time you’re not in the here and now, you’re not living. Arguably.

You may need to think hard about the 5 pointers you learned about in your time management class. You are reliving the New Year get-together as you edit your vlog. You are recollecting all the arguments you had rehearsed when confronting your partner. So, it’s time spent in the past, but… for an action that’s meant to make your Now richer.

“The cost of missing what's happening now is higher than you think.”

If I am writing for a specific reaction after it’s posted, after it’s read, am I really living? The narrative becomes: “I will start living when this post takes off.”

There’s always a desired feeling, one you don’t have on you right now.
Which is why we’re rarely living.

Aren’t there times when you see a picture or observe someone’s life and feel like wow, they’re alive? The thought only occurs when we feel dead inside.

And we feel like it because we believe there’s nothing worth being present for.

There was something good in the past and there will be something better in the future, but for now I have nothing better to do than grit my teeth.
Also known as, being stressed.

You want to feel free, but you don’t want to do anything that will actually bring that feeling. Basically, wanting two things at once is stress.

We’re always wanting and rarely doing.
And that in a sentence is the reason for our unhappiness, feeling lost and not feeling alive.

Feels hard to keep walking forward with hope? Then don’t.
Just walk. Just make the walk itself interesting. Change the view of the walk if you can, if not? Change your attitude. That’s something we control at all times. In fact, pretty much the only thing.

Living demands your attention now.
If you can’t give it that, it can’t give you the taste of being alive.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” – Mary Oliver