i was thinking today about how relatively easy it should be to be a human. here's why: you never have to know the answer.
let me try to explain what i mean. we are always looking ahead, aren't we? (and/or looking behind. but whether it's looking forward or behind, the effect it has on our lives is the same.) we look ahead - we try to second guess the future - because we hate surprises. we like being prepared. yet all the effort that goes into our premeditated response to the anticipated future has one calamitous drawback. it distracts us away from the moment we are in right now. the upshot is that well before we get to that anticipated future where we can practice our clever premeditated response - waaaaay before that time there is the moment that comes up shortly after the one we're in right now. that moment - the one that comes right after the one we're in right now - needs our attention much more than the one we've been planning all our moves around. and, of course, the moment we are actually in is more in need of us attending to it than the moment that's about to arrive.
imagine you have a child in your life that needs your attention right now, but rather than attending to him you're thinking about the next kid you're going to have and you're wondering if the second child will be a boy or a girl (oh, you'll be doing the ultrasound to confirm the sex; after all, you like being prepared), but in the meantime you haven't noticed that the child who's actually in the same room with you already - the one that was born several years ago, remember? - is having a fit because the crayon he's using just broke in half and it was his special blue superhero crayon that goes to sleep in a special box next to his bed so it can protect him at night because it fits just so in the box but now that it's broken it can't fit properly in there anymore and the whole world has come to an end! sound familiar? sometimes we like living in the future or the past to forget about the present.
back to that moment we weren't in because we were somewhere downstream... by default, when we don't see where we are because we're looking far ahead, we cannot adequately negotiate our way to that future point. the future is the sum total of what occurs from "now" till the time it arrives. therefore, the image we have in our minds of how we will respond to that anticipated future cannot account for the many events between "now" and "then" simply because they haven't yet occurred. yet all those events ultimately shape the future. and those events begin now. by ignoring or avoiding "now" we make it more difficult to deal with "then."
all of that to tell you my new mantra: see. say. surrender.
it seems to me that it's our fears and hopes which drive this knee-jerk reaction to dwell on the past or live in the future. but if we can isolate a fear, say, by first looking at it - really recognizing it - we have begun to take control of living now. we are starting to see.
after seeing follows saying. aloud. you must hear your own voice saying the words that describe whatever it is you're afraid of. by articulating the fear, actually putting words to it, the fear is no longer some vague condition that you occasionally get a fleeting glimpse of. it's real. it's in the same room with you. it's screaming your name.
finally there is surrender. let yourself go. get scared, for you will never learn how to deal with that fear if you don't actually allow yourself to be scared. and as you go through it, moment to moment, not living in some idealized future or in a regretful past, but right now in the moment, you will learn that by some miracle you already have the skills to cope with your fear. you already know the answer before it actually comes, not because you have intellectualized it, but because you have lived every moment till its arrival.
that's why it should be relatively easy to be a human. we already know the answer.
