Be Present

Where I settle, I occupy,

It’s the mischief of nature called time, that even though we have a past and a future. We forever, are trapped in a moment.

A moment becomes a cycle, a looped song you just can’t turn off no more until eventually, you hate it.

Then you wake up one day and you’re 25 asking yourself, how exactly did I get here? Scratching your head in disbelief.

What was that moment again, remember!

Ahhh, you felt like a loser, when she choose that other guy instead of you. The the whispers behind your back. The gazing eyes on every wall.

So you played it back and imagined it different. Everything different down to the day it happened. Like what if, but what if never changes what is and so the loop begun.

New instances to update the loop app, ensuring the cycle becomes a complex habit. So complex, you don’t remember the path you started on. Yet so easy to get lost, you stumbled into your room only to awaken years later, with little recollection of how you got lost.

Getting extremely busy, fake busy with make believe occurrences of events that are in no way happening except within the mind. The complexities piled sky high, shuffling themselves into neat little deck of cards, where as you know the house always wins.

It really is hard to find a moment to gain peace of mind and unlearn the fallacies of life. Worse, knowing you deserve better but are unable to actualise as the mind keeps the tricks cycling through.

Calm the mind, by being totally focused on life, on the present happenings around you. Don’t let the past drag you into its quicksand and don’t allow the future to sell you dreams galore.

However, pay attention to your breathing, to how your loved ones laugh or cry, to the heat and how the sweat feels trickling down your forehead.

Pay attention to the one second of life that characterises the moment and just enjoy the sensations of being alive. Be present as life is a gift.

The past is behind, we must learn from it. The future is ahead, we must prepare for it. The present is now, we must live in it.

Thomas S Monson