Mindfulness
Waiting For Things To Fall Into Place
Many of us have this nasty habit of constantly looking to the future, waiting for things to fall into place, putting our ‘real’ lives on hold until our plans come to fruition. We believe that once our situations have come together we’ll be able to really start living.
In effect we cheapen our existence as it is now, discounting what we have going on in favor of some imagined future. And that’s the real problem. It’s all in our imaginations and there is no guarantee this future will come to be. Even if it does there is no guarantee we’ll feel the same way then as we do now, nor is there a guarantee that this result in our imagination will feel the same way to us in reality.
Furthermore there is no guarantee we’ll even get there; life is a precarious thing. The only certainty is that minimizing the concrete reality of today for something that may or may not happen tomorrow is insanity. The mindful answer is to become fully present in our lives as they are right now, to realize we already have all the necessary conditions for our happiness.
A misconception about the mindful attitude is that it discounts the future. But actually it just reminds us that all life takes place in the present, including those times when we’re contemplating the future, so we want to ground ourselves in present reality while projecting ourselves forward rather than getting lost in our dreams and fantasies.
Anyway, making future goals come to fruition means a series of connected concrete behaviors that all occur in the present moment. There is no reason why we can’t take as much joy in the process as we do in the result when we see that the result is impossible without the process. Actually the best way to insure this result is attained is by focusing all of our mindful attention on each step of the journey as it occurs.
