Words of Wisdom || The Now

The Buddha tells us to live in the moment.  But we worry too much of what is ahead. We continuously place ourselves ahead of the game. This is necessary to do at some degree in order to plan ahead and mitigate risks of course, but there is a balance. The 'now' is fleeting and will not come back. Enjoy it while you are in it not when it becomes a distant memory of the past.

How we think manifests itself in our bodies, and while most of us 'visit the future' regularly, we can end up looking like turtles with our heads stretched forward, already mentally inhabiting the next place we're headed long before we have arrived.  We derive a kind of happiness from the anticipation, but strangely, when we are actually in the situation or place we've mentally preppared for, we aren't present in the moment, because we've trained ourselves to look for happiness in the 'next' moment, not in the present one.  Contentment is when we realize that this moment, this 'now', contains all the beauty and mystery of any other moment in time.