Past Present Future

I’ve found that if I dwell too much on the past, I feel sad. If I dwell too much on the future, I feel worried. So lately I’ve been trying to keep my mind focussed more on the present moment. That is to say, I direct my thoughts to my senses and really pay attention. Right now I hear the sound of a fan. I can feel the smooth surface of my keyboard’s keys. I enjoy the click-clack as they shoot out some words on the screen. When I walk around outside, I look at the trees and see the people around me. I have a favourite part of the path, where there’s just that bit more greenery, sunshine, and niceness. I still have plans for the future, and lessons I’ve learnt from the past, but by keeping more attention on whatever’s happening now, I tend to feel more at peace.

Just reducing the length of time I look back and forth into, seems to help. At the end of a day before going to sleep, it feels more productive to weigh up what I did right and what I did wrong in that one day, instead of spending energy on recollections from way back when. Those past experiences are finished. I can’t change them, and if they are impacting my life in a useless way, then why spend time on them? Incidentally, sometimes when I’m just going about my day, a random memory of an embarrassing moment from years ago will just pop up out of nowhere. Perhaps it’s better to not react to those types of “pop ups”, and to give them no energy, focus, or even a thought. They are what they are, and they can drift on by, like a cloud in the sky.

Stoicism is an interesting philosophy, and teaches the benefits of creating a gap between an experience, and how one chooses to react to it. Sometimes that’s easier said than done, but not reacting to memories and thoughts which have no place in my life now, seems to be a better choice for me. I think meditation could also be a useful tool for widening that gap, and it’s one of those things I keep meaning to get back into.