On Being Present
Advice from Marcus Aurelius about living in the moment
My mind has been preoccupied for the last week or so. Everything I do seems to need more effort than typical and my motivation seems to be lagging something rotten. I’m not unwell though or even unhappy. In fact, I’m just the opposite, I’m fit, healthy and excited.
I’m excited about my upcoming holiday to Crete, a beautiful island rich in culture, hospitality and history. Lots of history. I’m not usually the type to be excited until I’m either in the airport or actually on holiday but this time it’s different.
Sometimes when you are about to go on holiday you feel that you are ‘ready’ for it or that you ‘need’ it. Works been exhausting, there are other problems in your life and you feel like you’re ‘this close’ to someone tipping you over the edge. This time, however, I don’t feel any of those. I feel content. I’m happy with my professional career and also this writing publication. I’m nowhere to be seen near any edge.
But I am aware that I have mentally and physically checked out the last week or so and I’ve got to say it’s bothering me a little.
"If you've seen the present then you've seen everything."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Is it right to mentally propel your thoughts away from the present and to something on the horizon?
Marcus Aurelius wouldn’t say so. Marcus Aurelius as a man and an emperor went through pretty much everything imaginable yet he still managed to remember that life, at any moment can be taken away from us and that the only virtuous thing to do is to not live in the past or the present, but in the now.
I have nothing to wish away yet it’s what i am doing. How ashamed a younger me would be if he would have known, stuck deep in that abyss that all his toil would bring such wastefulness.
I think it’s only human nature, especially in bad times that we wish time away. We crave something to look forward to especially if that something is better than what we currently have but this mode of thought isn’t for content people and it’s something I ought to remember and tell myself more often.
"Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone-those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Good moments seem fleeting and bad moments seem never-ending which can create this hopeful thinking that we can slow down time when we want to savour moments and fast forward, even skip time when we don’t like what’s going on around us.
We can’t change the past and we do not know the future so what we are left with is the now. That’s all that we can ever have that we can use.
So for good and for bad remember that what you’re going through is unique, it’ll never happen to you again, at least not exactly the same way anyway. If it’s something special and memorable remember to take a few pauses to savour the moment and if it’s something ugly then try to take solace in your courage and the lessons the future you will thank you for.
Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us-a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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*Photo by Vlad Bagacian: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-white-t-shirt-and-gray-denim-jeans-outfit-on-green-grass-field-1314186/