The future is none of my business
The power of now.
Last week at Alanon, someone shared something that hit me like a ton of bricks:
“The future is none of my business.”
Lately, I’ve been using daydreaming of my future to escape my present. I’ve got big travel plans for the fall; I even have a 1.5-year plan to eventually exit Austin. My present is full of grief, a dull pulse of pain that’s always with me, sometimes a sudden punch in the face. I feel a bit stuck in the mud of Now, and a vision of an uncertain, possibly brighter future is distracting me from what is.
What about this life that I painstakingly built, that I used to dream of just five years ago?
What choices would I make if I only had now? If I knew this week, this season, this year was all I had, what would I immediately choose? What decisions that seemed hard would instantly be easy for me to make?
What risks would I take if tomorrow’s hypothetical consequences didn’t hold me back?
What would I feel brave enough to create?
How would I bet on myself, all bets off?
What’s the story I’d feel compelled to tell? What have I been putting off that now I’d rush to finish?
What would I instantly let go of? What would suddenly be so easy for me to deprioritize (looking at you, work)? What new priority would this make space for?
Who would I rush to tell something?
At last night’s Alanon meeting, someone said,
“When you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, all you do is piss on the present.”
I know I don’t wanna be pissing the night away. Answering these questions for myself gave some clarity. For now.
I invite you to take some time to answer them for yourself today.
this is so true, honey we dwell in the past a lot, and we look forward to the future a lot but sometimes we miss what’s going on right now. I find a few times when I’m completely present in the now is when I’m Fly Fishing. Following the water. Following my bobber going up and down waiting for that fish to bite so I can snap him up! 🎣 For those of you who are wondering, I do catch & release. Recently I have found that my watercolor painting class keeps me in the now. I’ll be working on a watercolor painting technique and it’s hard to watercolor paint well! So I’ll be focusing on doing what I’m doing when I’m painting, and that keeps me in the now. And of course, spending time with you sweet girls. That is my joy in the now! 🥰
I love this and was thinking of this today. I was in a beautiful place on the beach. When I felt my mind drifting to the future I tried the five senses technique. Five things I see, four I hear, three I touch, two I smell and one I taste!