This moment, now.

Sometimes, in the stillness of a night or in a moment of sweet repose there is a clarity heretofore unknown. An understanding of the machinations through which we put ourselves, hanging on to painful memories, bitter disappointments, and our own sins of omission and commission. How much have we held on to that which causes us pain? Or grief? Or sorrow? Or fear? Or, as Frank Conroy wrote of in his memoir Stop-Time, to “irrelevant tears?”

The thing is, I seem to at long last be learning, we get something from these feelings. We need to feel sad or small or angry or a failure or doomed. If we embrace those feelings, then we trick ourselves into thinking we will be immune from the pain when it is once and for all established that we, in fact, are sad or small or angry or a failure or doomed.

Problem is, it doesn’t work. Never has. Never will.

These terms are overly simplistic, wrongheaded, and self-tortuous at best. An emotion is just that, an emotion. Eckhart Tolle suggests (and for the record, I think he’s right) that if we allow ourselves to feel whatever we are feeling then it will soon simply matter less, hurt less, and do less damage. If we accept that “there is, at times, an unhappiness within us,” the mere act of acceptance begins to rob that unhappiness of its power. Because the thing to remember is: that unhappiness or fear or anger is not us, it is not you, it is not me – it is simply and solely a feeling that exists at a particular time. If we accept it and let it be okay, we soon learn that there are a bunch of other emotions we are capable of feeling at the same time. Gratitude, peace, calm, love.

We live in the moment that is, regardless of what we so often tell ourselves. I know that I spent more years than I care to mention spending all my energies (or nearly so) anticipating how GREAT things were going to be when x, y, or z happened. But it never really pans out that way, does it? Of course not. Why? Because by the time those things happen, we already have compiled a new list of x’s, y’s, and z’s that are required in order for us to be happy, to be content, to be whole.

We’re whole right this very second. This one. No, this one. This one. You see? It is always about the moment in which we are, the moment we live is this one right now. Enjoy it!

Namaste.