We are all guilty of it now and then. When things get too stressful, and we wish we could just hide under the covers and avoid all that is waiting for us outside our bedroom doors, the most reassuring tactic we have in our arsenal is to look ahead. Think about the moment when all of the anxiety will be over. Whether it be the end of a stressful week, the day of a deadline, those three weeks between now and the next break from school. We somehow ease the stress of our day-to-day by wishing away the time that separates us from a much saner place we can only reach once we've completed all that we have to do.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this mentality-- if your only other option is to run away and avoid what it is that causes this yearning for the future, then by all means keep on wishing time away. What I want to point out is that time is a funny thing. There are moments when we feel like we have so much of it, certain milestones ahead of us may seem almost unimaginable. We place these distant goals far back in our minds and stumble through our days hoping that things will fall into place and that far away future will somehow get clearer with time. But at some point, time catches up with us, and we find ourselves at a point where suddenly, we don't have so much of it left. What once felt like a distant reality has crept its way into our present, and oddly enough that image of where we saw ourselves when this milestone came along isn't one bit clearer.
Sometimes, time isn't in our control. Something greater than ourselves-- whether you believe it to be God, fate, karma, or something else-- has the ultimate say in when things will happen for us. And while most of us are pretty aware of just how little control we have over the time we are given, we still catch ourselves looking ahead, hoping that a certain moment will come sooner. Wishing that we could skip ahead and reach our final goal, skipping over all the parts in between. But why?
Henry David Thoreau once said, "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this."
His prose rings true. We must come to the realization that, looking forward can be all-consuming. It distracts us fro the present as we wait for something to come. But rather than watching and waiting, why don't we just take what little control we have and put it to use! Each day, we must actively choose to take our fear-- our stress, whatever it is that hinders us-- head on, and do what we can to overcome these things with the resiliency that will bring us one step closer to that future that still seems so uncertain. For if we can do this-- live in the present moment-- we can take back a little bit of that control, and ensure that when we do in fact decide to look back, we won't see wasted time, but time that has built itself up to create a pretty incredible life.
