On living in the future and in the present

When you live in the future, any new prob­lem that delays its arrival brings on a fit of irri­ta­tion, or at least a bad case of nerves. You’re angry that you can’t move on because of the obsta­cle that has come up. In effect, you’re wast­ing your energy: prob­lems are an inevitable and impor­tant part of any path (even a path with a low­er­case p).

Besides accept­ing prob­lems as an inevitable but sur­mount­able given, you can also try simply not living in the future. Living in the present, it’s easier to accept that these “prob­lems” and “rou­tines” are life itself.

Race through it with a stop­watch, “I’m not keep­ing up” and “so much still to do” run­ning through your head, fast-forwarding it like a video­tape, or slow down and actu­ally live it?

Fast-forwarding life, trying to skip what you have now and go straight to dessert, invari­ably ends in “ago­niz­ing pain” over the time and the chances you missed.

Something like that.

Thanks for the inspi­ra­tion to Leo Babauta (for exam­ple, his book Focus: A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction) and Armen Petrosyan (his blog is “Zhit interesno!”, “Living is interesting!”).