...what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." John Lennon, from "Beautiful Boy.")
At times, I find I get nostalgic for another time in my life. It could be a time when my kids were small or a time when I was in college; when this or that was happening in my life. I am thinking of inventing a computer chip that could be attached to my wrist. Actually, a rubber band on my wrist that I could snap whenever I needed "snapping out of it" would do. In these fits of nostalgia, if I am realistic about them, I am selectively editing out certain segments of the times of my life that I'm currently missing. I'm just remembering the time in my life that allows me to think that another time of my life was better than the time I am in at that moment. Perhaps I am being too unclear, here--let me explain.
What I mean is this. In fact. I didn't love every moment of the times I embellish in my mind. Example: I loved parts of the time when my kids were small. Why? Because they were cute and cuddly and lived in the room next to mine. What I am forgetting is that there was a lot I didn't love about that time. Maybe it was that they had ear infections a lot and we were holed up in our rather isolated house in the 'burbs or I worried about their progress in school and I was living in the country-like suburbs without much of a support system nearby....Or forgetting that, in these same years, from about twenty-four to about forty-something I was still (as we used to hear a lot in those days): "trying to find myself." (As in: "What will I be when ((and if)) I grow up?")
It's pretty much the same with college. Yes, it was a time when I could wear a two-piece bathing suit and a time when I had a lot of friends and family living nearby. But, it was also a time when I thought every decision I made (or was made for me) was the-end-of-the-world: from "What should I major in, in college?" to "Is this guy I'm dating going to be the father of my children?"; From "Should I stay in the Midwest or move to New York?" (I'm from the Midwest) to "Should I continue my education?"
I forget about how I worried about boyfriends, whether I had one or not. If I had a boyfriend, I would worry: "Does he care for me enough?" or "Do I care for him enough?" or "How will I break up with him?" or "He's breaking up with me!" If I didn't have a boyfriend, I'd worry: "Maybe I will never have a boyfriend" or "Maybe everyone good is already taken."
Frequently, when I was in school, I'd worry about school-work: "I don't think I can finish this paper--and I'm going to fail the class if I don't!" Or: "I'm not understanding this statistics class; how will I ever get through it?" Sometimes, I'd be studying way into the night in an effort to do well on a test or complete a paper. Following this kind of "cramming" I'd end up being too tired in the morning to concentrate well on the test or I might oversleep and miss the class altogether--thus, I wouldn't turn in my paper at all, even though I had finished it.
I think of another quote, which is the result of the kind of thinking that we humans do--always concerning ourselves with the past or the future--and never really being present for our life as it is happening. Colette, the Turn-of-the-Century French novelist, is reported to have said, on her deathbed: "What a wonderful life I've had. I only wish I'd realized it sooner."
Computer chip? Rubber band? How does one continue to remain present for the only thing there really is (outside of our imaginations, however we are editing at the moment): As Ekhart Tolle has reminded us in his writings: all we really ever have, is The Now. Whether it's a difficult time or a terrific one (and usually there are components of both in every time)....Do we want to miss it, while obsessing over the past or the future?
Next (and my final post in this, my life-lessons series): a riddle.
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