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Chasing the Invisible

How much time do you spend each day thinking about the past or the future? Do you find yourself ruminating upon past problems and reflecting on past joys wistfully? Do you find yourself worrying about what might happen, if you will be alone, if you will be ok in the future? These thoughts arise unbidden from the landscape of the mind and provide us with the majority of the narrative we pay attention to daily.

The past is tricky, because unless we spend at least some time reflecting on what has happened, we are unlikely to learn or retain valuable lessons. Yet, every one of us has experienced the ways that sad memories and depressing or regretful thoughts creep into our consciousness and drain our life force. If you find yourself rehashing old arguments and conversations, thinking about what you could have said in order to "win" the discussion or gain situational favor, then it is likely that you are not getting the best possible lesson from your reflective time. If you do not have reflective time in your life deliberately set aside, it's even more important to pay attention to how rumination crashes into your daily life with a painful force, threatening your ability to be present.

The future is also tricky. Though you might consult oracles, make plans, coordinate schedules, save money, and create certain conditions in your life, you cannot ever really be sure of what will happen. All it takes is one single instant for everything to shift, for plans to fall away, for the whole fabric of life to change shape. In light of this, you must not get too attached to your mental fabrications of the future. Yet, you still must plan, because if you do not acknowledge that winter is just around the corner, and if you fail to store food sensibly, you will starve. Without any plans at all, the future is chaos. This is why it's important to pay attention to things like social security, the rising sea level, and health care contingencies. If you do not set aside the time to pay attention to these things, they, too, burst unbidden into your mind at the most unlikely and inconvenient times, like when you are just getting ready to sleep, or celebrate a birthday. And what good can you do about them then?

Without proper deliberate attention to reflection and planning, without the time put aside to attend to these things, they begin to dominate your life, swinging like a wrecking ball and derailing your intimate relationship with the Here and Now. Think about how much of your day you spend chasing the invisible: ruminating, rehashing, planning, and dreaming about what may come. It adds up. How much time? An hour? 6? More? How much of your day is spent in a time and place other than here and now? 

When you find yourself chasing the invisible, yet again, don't judge yourself too harshly. Just notice how your human, animal self is seeking a comfort that it will not find in the past or future, and turn your attention instead to the wonder of Here, Now. It is possible that you will find everything you might be trying to fabricate if you do this.