Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s past. “We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we’re at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don’t appreciate the living present because our “monkey minds,” as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

Most of us don’t undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control us. “Ordinary thoughts course through our mind like a deafening waterfall,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biomedical scientist who introduced meditation into mainstream medicine. In order to feel more in control of our minds and our lives, to find the sense of balance that eludes us, we need to step out of this current, to pause, and, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, to “rest in stillness—to stop doing and focus on just being.”

We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment—also called mindfulness—is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience.   From a “Psychology Today” article By Jay Dixit November 01, 2008 link

“True Joy” by M. Jolynn Rawson-Hunt
I’ll be happy once I’ve done this certain thing.
We all say this often not realizing what it brings.
We look only to the future for our happiness.
Letting life slip through our fingers in its fullness.
Will we really feel complete when the task is done,
or look back and see how we missed so much fun?
Self consumed so we can’t see anything else,
hurting those we love as well as ourselves.
So many things around us to be grateful for,
when seeking for an answer willingly open the door.
So often, others see what’s in front of our face,
but we’re too blind to look as we’re snared in the race.
What is this life supposed to be about?
Is it money, fortune, fame, or a big house?
When speaking to a man on his dying bed,
none of these answers are what he said.
Family, love, laughter are what we should seek.
These are the precious things right outside your door.

Trying to be fully present in the “now” is a battle regularly fought and I am grateful for any reminder that brings me more fully to “this moment”.  Frequently I drift into the “stinkin’ thinkin'” about the past or present, but find more quickly than ever I can snap back into the now.  All I have to do is be mindful of what I am doing and reset myself.  I am grateful for the path I have walked and am still on, that moves me ever so slowly to being more and more fully present in the “now”.

Waste not fresh tears over old grief’s.
Euripides