# Chapter 76

“We do not live in this moment. We, in fact, try desperately to get out of it - by thinking , doing, talking, worrying, remembering, hoping, whatever.” - Ryan Holiday.

This is a profound truth I fear. There is no more difficult moment to live in and no more important moment to live in. Especially someone as future-focused as I have been all my life. I think I missed entire decades of being present and being still, focused, intentional about treasuring the now. I can’t recall anything I did from my mid-20 until my mid-40’s that was very much in the moment. I was too busy doing all the things that Holiday mentions above and more. All my hurry and scurrying total obliterated any living in the moment.

Looking back it was a full life, of accomplishments and action like a life. There was lots of doing, if not very much being. But like the chapters and characters I have been writing about from the past few days, this was a life characterized by busy. Being overclocked. Overwhelmed. The value was in how needed and necessary I was to . . . whatever. How much I crammed into each day. My exhaustion was my merit badge of significance. My stress was my dress tie in my favorite outfit. My hurry was the measure of my significance. It was a busy life . . . it wasn’t much of a life.

We indeed try desperately to get out of the moment, still today. The smartphone in my pocket is the most common tool of presence-skipping. Not just for me, but for just about every single person in the Western world. When I was a small kid, there was one phone in my neighborhood for five families. Then one per family (although we still shared the line with the other four families) and now there are at least one phone per person! And I have guys in my life who have multiple phones and they spread them out on the table when we meet for effect.