Now – A Renewed Perspective

We live in a world where it is extremely easy to be enveloped by the perspective of Christian theology that believes that due to “original sin” mankind is evil and dark by nature and beyond any possibilities of goodness.

In today’s world, with mass global media, we can and do hear about every dark thing that occurs anywhere on the planet, almost instantaneously.

There’s an old adage in the news business that goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Add to that philosophy the fairly recent paradigm shift that news divisions should be profit centers and today’s news media is easily understood. Fortunately, we haven’t quite gone as far as 1976’s “Network” and Howard Beale’s eventual murder/sacrifice for ratings, though I would not be amazingly surprised if it showed up in the not so distant future.

Add to this the unending future look of “Coming Soon”, be it movies, products or any number of events to look forward to.  On top of this there is always the tendency to spend our working hours not in the moment, but as the song says, “Everybody’s working for the weekend.”

There are a couple of old expressions that mean the same thing;

• Yesterday is a cancelled cheque, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is the only cash you have.
• If you have one foot in yesterday and one in tomorrow, you are going to poop on today (I tried to be nice about it…)

How does one even become aware of the now, this moment in time and place?  You start looking at it, when you catch yourself living outside now, bring yourself back.

This also works with worry and regret, both are putting your energy into things you don’t need to be fretting about while attempting to exist outside this moment.

This moment is all you truly have, you may or may not have another one and it will be another moment, not this one, why waste it of that which cannot be but a waste of time and energy?