Monday morning strikes you in the head like a hammer as you reach and finally smash your alarm clock to end its eternal beeping. You run to your first two periods back to back, missing breakfast because you had a late night doing homework, and you take your first breath as conference comes about. After grinding more work for forty minutes, you sit in each of your following classes wondering when it will end, and wondering when you can fill all the small gaps and crevices of the day to complete Tuesday’s assignments. Unsatisfied with the completion of tomorrow’s work, your mind runs to the work for Wednesday and the days that follow. The dynamic hands on the clock are beyond you. Beyond your mind, and beyond your sense of agency. We constantly act in ways to support the future. The problem lies not only in looking towards what is ahead, but also in how we constantly stress about the worries of tomorrow. We concern ourselves with filling every millisecond of space with something that can help us in the future, but we forget to help ourselves in the present. Giving yourself grace in the present instead of rushing to help yourself in the future can prevent the cruel feeling of losing sight of what matters to you. In the present, you do not always have to solve your future problems. Instead, the present you needs as much attention, support, and care as the future you does. When you forced yourself to keep working after finishing the tasks for tomorrow, you ignored your present cries for rest. When we rush towards the future and only have it in mind, the unresolved issues of the present get swept under the rug. These issues resurface to the shore like a tsunami when you complete all the tasks ahead and are faced with the old burdens you ignored. This tsunami could have been waves if you addressed the problems and paid attention to the small joys of the present in the moment.
When I find myself stuck and lost in a cycle driven by the dopamine of completing tasks and being ahead, I start to forget what really makes me happy. I realized that I am not really ahead, but instead have been sacrificing the precious acts of a day that bring a smile across my face. I forget the joys of sitting at dinner with my friends and not worrying about the test I have the day after tomorrow. I forget the laughter that comes with going to my friends room and playing games until lights out when I finish my homework instead of rushing to do the work for the days ahead. When I lay in my bed and look up at the ceiling while the bright moonlight seeps in through my window to expose the realities of the room, it hits me that I did absolutely nothing to satisfy my soul in the last few days. I began to wonder if I will ever really live in the moment and cherish it.
Living in the moment makes every day feel memorable. The moment is the only thing you can control, while the future is an entity of circumstance that you do not have access to quite yet. Instead of burning through every single day for the sole purpose of completing your commitments and going through the motions, you are meant to live through every day. You are meant to laugh at the joke your classmate made instead of stressing with your head down, have a night of rest and dreams instead of wrestling with your sheets from left to right with anxiety about what tomorrow holds, admire the gorgeous weather and mellow sunset while you walk to Commons, and attentively listen in the conversation you are having with your best friend. When you address the tiredness you feel right now, you will not face the cruel burn out later. When you take that time to hang out with your friends on Friday night instead of rushing to finish your work for the weekend, you will feel fulfillment for allowing yourself to feel the moments of the present to cherish in the future. When you take that time on Thursday night to eat ice cream, watch a movie, and maybe shed a few tears because the day went poorly, your present and future self is thanking you for taking care of yourself instead of letting feelings build up and affect the future. To take control of the present is to move closer to living out your dreams, being in control of what you can control, and feeling the sensations that will balance your internal state and mental health.
Forgetting to take control of the present is what causes that emptiness when you lie awake at night. This is what makes you lose your passions. Your ability to be present. Your ability to live in the moment. Your happiness slowly seeps down the drain like rain that slightly floods around it. You rush towards the future to take full control of it, when you do not have control of the present. You let the days drift by you, each day rushing to pack up its bags and disappearing from your memory once the clock hits twelve. The twenty-four hours of a day act as a shallow period of grinding through pages and pages and pages of homework. But a day is so much more than that. So really, what is the rush? By living in a demanding atmosphere where the people around you are always working on something, always talking about how they finished this and that, and always talking about how much they have done, it is difficult not to rush yourself, not to move with the fast moving currents, and not to squeeze every bit of your might and energy into feeling like you are ahead. It is not bad to have agency over the future, but where the boundary lies is where you have no agency for the present. Time is not running away from you. It exists alongside you.
