How to Live Now- Not When

When and Now

Have you ever considered the word ‘when’? When have you considered it? When you are waking in the morning? “I’ll take a minute to breathe WHEN I get to work. The kids need their lunches prepared”.

When you are in the shower? “When I get done, I’ll quick start the coffee and drink it on the way to work. I’ll read my Bible later”.

Four letters. One vowel. But oh, how powerful. This small word has the ability to drive a person insane. It has driven people to drink, and to drugs and to divorce. Think about what the word actually relates to. “There’s a better world a comin’” Woodie Guthrie sang. Judy Garland gave us “Somewhere, over the Rainbow”. We just don’t know where the rainbow is, or when we arrive at its end.

According to the When Association of Crazy Worriers, today is not important at all. The only real meaning for work and existence is when we arrive we will know bliss. Thus, get as much done as fast as you can with as much hub bub as possible, so you are ready when you get there. The problem is, the WACW does not have an answer for how one knows when one gets wherever it is they’re going..

Let’s look at getting there. “When I have a new house”. Nope. The day after you move in, the house will not be new to you. “When I get my Masters Degree.” Nope. Two minutes after the people leave the graduation ceremony, you are an over qualified underwhelmingly educated has been. “I’ve arrived, I made retirement.” Aha! You’ve arrived. You made it. So what now? With a little luck, your former employer has given you, not a gold watch, but a silver spoon, for digging your own grave. Now depending on how much the boss liked you, the spoon is either a tea spoon or a table spoon. “I made it! I have the house on the beach, the Mercedes, the gold medallion.” Where have you gotten? To the high tax bracketed place where waves can crash your image of there.

When allows a person to forget now. When is the size six cheerleader who loves you today and ten years later has 3 kids, 40 extra pounds of baby belly and hairy armpits, while wearing busted flip flops that show diaper bleach stains around the toes.

When is the guy who starts at the top of the food chain and works his way down, with a beer gut and dirty white socks to show for his effort. The life of the party guy who goes home to rusty dishes and eats last week’s chicken tortillas before heating them up or remembering that he forgot to put them in the fridge last week.

When and Worry are kissing cousins. You can’t have one without the other. “I’m worried about when we will pay off the house.” Oops, too bad, that stroke you thought about having actually happened. Now you can worry about selling the house instead. “I’ll stop worrying when I lose 40 pounds.” Hurray for you. A good way to lose 40 pounds is to put worry in the closet with when and finally start eating appropriately.

There has to be a reason that rational people allow four squiggles to steal their inner child. It feels good to consider ‘when’. This makes for a great way to miss the roses and the smells of spring. Who needs that anyway? Nope. Roses only bite when- there’s that word- you try to control them with a tight grasp of the middle, index and thumb digits of either hand.

Eureka! Allowing ‘when’ to take control eliminates the need to do the best one can with what one has at the time one has it. “I’ll quit drinking when I get divorced”. “I’ll stop cutting myself when the pain goes away”.

What if we looked at ‘now’? ‘Now’ I am writing an article that will offer hope to the reader as well as the writer. ‘Now’ I am breathing with relief that reminds me to enjoy my freedom. ‘Now’ I am here. I am right where I should be at the exact time I should be here.

Living now accepts that I am taking control. I am knowing where I am because I am aware. Now. In a classroom? A Library? On the golf course? In a sick bed?

St. Paul has a line “When I was a child, I thought like a child”. ‘When’ again. How about now “Now I’m a big person, I think like a big person”. Nowhere near as poetic.

So, when will you look at now? How about now? Tomorrow never comes.

Just for today, try these mantras to get away from ‘when’:

I am here. Now. Thank you God, Father, Mother, Spirit. 5 x slowly, as you breathe.

Thank you for __________ fill in the blank. As many times as it takes to quash the hee bee gee bees of when.

I am slow. Relax and Calm. Breathe deeply paying attention to your chest as it rises and falls.

Dream dreams and you’ll see miracles!

Copyright Abundantoldsould2012