Future polluting

Chapter 273

Anxiety pollutes the present with imagined problems and future responsibilities.

A constant rush to the NEXT thing ruins THIS thing.

Don’t squander the present on the future. Dan Rockwell

In the middle of the Coronavirus WWS (world wide shutdown) this has very true. Its been generally true in the West for a long while, and very very true in my life. Anxiety wears lots of different faces, from problem-solving to expectation obsessions, but I have never heard it described like Dan did here. Pollution. Polluting today and this moment. “But I am working on how to solve this problem” you argue, when in reality you are working on solving a “potential” problem in the future, that hasn’t happened yet. And so the Now is troubled with the possible problems of another day, and you and I lose the wonder and joy of the Now. If the future gets here, it will get here soon enough and have it’s own Now and possible future. All we have really is this moment, and no other.

Expectation obsession has us all running off in 40 different directions, what Dan calls the constant rush to the next thing. This one I have far too much experience with, the near future polluting any chance of the present to be as awesome as it is actually. I am 58 years old, and 48 of those years was a battle with the NEXT thing polluting the joy of THIS thing. The last 10 years I have been doing much better on this. I have been practicing, as my brother called it, “enjoying this for what it is, not what it’s not.”

You don’t have a future . . . at least not in the sense that you have a present. Don’t trade what you have for what you might have. 

Live in the moment.

Plan for future.

Let anxiety have no part of you.