What is Living in the Present?
We all have come across the saying that the path to a peaceful life is “Living in the present”. But what does it mean? How does one live in the present? How does that feel like? How would you know if you are living in the present?
I have struggled to understand and experience “Living in the present”. I have read, researched and pondered on this a lot, to get some sense and direction to achieve it. I have only failed to find something actionable in this. I have concluded many times that it’s something beyond the understanding of a normal human.
However recently I tried approaching the problem with a different angle, By understanding what is not living in the present. This approach has given me some hope to understand it better. I will not say that, I have cracked the code, but i surely feel that its a better framework.
Don’t live in the future or in the past
How do you define Darkness? The first response which might have come to you would have been, is that Darkness is where there is no light. You achieve darkness by closing all the sources of lights. Similarly you find silence by closing all the sources of sound.
Similarly by defining leaving in the present by what it’s not, makes it easier to understand. Instead of trying to live in the present, try not to live in the future or in the past. At a certain level this also seem like some profound jargon, but just slowly and steadily keep following me.
“Don’t live in the future or in the past”, this gives you an actionable framework. Very often you are processing some future and past event, looking at that from different angle, different expectations, mostly because you are worried or anxious, hoping the event would go in a certain way or should have gone in a certain way.
Once you realise that this is something which you are doing, you can immediately tell yourself to stop. Because thats exactly how you live elsewhere and not in present. You can do it because you accept the fact that living in the present is only way to have permanent peace. And if you haven’t accepted this yet, there is no harm in trying and seeing for yourself. Letting go of even one such thought of future or of past, would bring you one inch closer to peace.
Like every skill you will need to practice this. Till now many of us have practiced doubling down on thinking, to have sleepless nights, and you must have gotten pretty good at it. But now you have an actionable framework, which can bring you to your natural self inch by inch.