day twenty-one: now
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
-Wayne Dyer
We’ve reached Day 21! I’m so grateful you came on this journey. Please respond to this email with your thoughts or comments.
When we completed the first round of The When is Now - Day 21 fell on April 19th which was a strange milestone for me. Twenty years earlier I was 35 weeks pregnant, sitting at my desk at work, when I had a stroke—a bleed in the left frontal lobe of my brain took away speech and right side control. I was on the phone, confirming a reservation for my boss, and the woman on the other end of the line couldn’t make out what I was saying. I hovered above my body and observed what was happening. I was thinking the right words, but they were coming out of my mouth in gibberish. There are few things like a neurological event to thrust you into the present moment—the past and future disappear.
But something became clear: my body and the consciousness that witnesses my body are separate. There are some things in life that you cannot un-see. You cannot be as you were before. There is no going back. Right now, people say that they want things to go back to normal. But when was it normal? Was it when we were stealing land or when we had no civil rights? Was it when women couldn’t vote or could be raped in their own home without laws to protect them? There are great things about this country and our world, but there’s no past place of perfection we want to return to.
Some people called some aspects of this last year a retreat or even a vacation. Vacation has the same word root as vacant—empty. What if this time is an opportunity to empty out everything we know? To de-educate ourselves. We’re told that if our computers don’t work, if the internet goes awry, turn them off. A hard reset does the trick. What do we want resolved when we get turned back on? And what do we want to leave behind? We don’t have to do things as we did them yesterday. With care, we can pick and choose.
Re-doing the past is impossible. Worrying about what might come to be in the future is futile. I know you may have experienced loss or have legitimate worries about your health or the health of your loved ones, the economy and so much more. I don’t want to diminish those concerns. Yet, there’s no way to know what will come to pass. I had so many worries during my pregnancy, but a stroke—the thing that actually happened—was not on my list. Worry only robs us of today.
Some of us, especially as children, have experienced the sublime feeling of being in our bodies. Full of wonder, glee and delight. The rest of us are in our heads too much, mulling things over. Why do we outgrow the best parts of being alive? Why do we forget that presence—being fully embodied in breath or dance or touch or taste—is ours for the taking? And it’s available to all of us.
In the present, anything is possible. The moment is always here beckoning us, waiting for us to come out and play. Right here is the only place where the magic happens. It’s the only place where we can feel the sun on our face, smell an orange blossom, taste a perfectly ripe peach, listen to music and have an orgasm. Being in the now is our birthright.
It took a stroke for me to realize there is only this moment. Maybe something made you realize this too—that everything but the present is an illusion. What will you do? Right now? Right here? Life doesn’t happen when this is over. This pandemic. This pregnancy. This pause. This problem. Life happens here. Life happens now. The when is now because now is all there is.
Hillel the Elder said, If not now, when?
Our lives have been waiting for us. The start date is today.
Reflective Journal Prompts
Do you tend to be a look-back person or a worry-about-the-future person? What keeps you from living in the present moment? How could you live here more?
Describe three moments when you felt firmly rooted in the now, fully alive.
Discussion Prompts
Talk about what’s perfect about the exact moment you find yourself in. For children, ask them this same question.
Suggested Action
Locate yourself in the now. Feel your feet on the ground. The sun on your face. Breathe. You are here.
Please listen to this song which sums up so much of what we discussed these past few weeks. If you don’t have Spotify, listen on YouTube.
Further Reading
The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle
Be Here Now | Ram Dass