Neither the future nor the past can ever be dealt with, and they don’t need to be. You only need to deal with your present-moment thoughts about them. When you are not having thoughts about those two realms of time, they bear zero relevance to your life. You can safely let them go and feel free to deal with the living moment at hand.
This truth, once I fully understood it, released a huge weight from around my neck. Life wasn’t crushing and heavy, it was as light as air. Thin as a photograph. I was finally able to look into each moment as if it were nothing more than an infinitely detailed and poignant living picture. I could finally take the moments one at a time, because I understood that there never was more than one. I could appreciate and observe each one, and know that my whole life lies within it, not just a tiny fraction. There are no ghastly fears out there, stalking me from somewhere else, waiting to pounce. If they existed, they’d be right here, in the picture for me to look at with the rest of the scenery. Moments do hold me captive, and everything else does drop away. But they aren’t few and far between, they’re broadcast live, 24-7.
Moments can be observed with clarity, and can be navigated deftly, but our whole lives are just too vast to be managed at all, no matter how strong or organized we become. The crushing weight of one’s entire past is always too much to bear, as is the frightful specter of another forty or fifty years rife with dilemmas and tragedies. It’s far too complex; there are too many contingencies and unknowns. Surely something in there will overwhelm or destroy us.
A human being just can’t deal with that, and often it feels like the best we can do is distract ourselves from it. But we don’t need to.
We just have to recognize that there is no ‘out there’ at all. Life is in right front of you, all of it, always. And there isn’t any more to it.
by David
http://www.raptitude.com/2009/04/the-most-important-thing-i-ever-learned/
PORTABLE LIFE SKILLS DAILY WISDOM GUIDE 