The Only Time is Now. The Only Place is Here.
The Only Time is Now. The Only Place is Here.
There is no problem. Never is. Never was. Never will be.
At first read this may sound like a controversial, untrue statement. Yet as I endeavor to argue otherwise through this article, it is the simplest of truths that exists. It is however sad that this is so unbelievable in our realities, in our existence and in our daily lives, that we are perhaps surmounted by problems.
Webster defines problem as a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.
It might thus be fair to say that there aren’t any problems or for that matter any solutions. There are just welcome or unwelcome situations.
Lets look at an unwelcome situation. Assume for a moment that I was to come in your living room with a pale of garbage and dump it on your nice carpeted floor. All of it. The odds are enormous that one of the three things will happen. You will either scream, shout or beat me physically or call the law and have me escorted out or make me physically clean the mess. I bet I’ll clean it up too.
BUT for the next several weeks and may be months you will be talking about that crazy guy who dumped garbage in your living room. You will never forget it. You will probably feel repulsed every time you think or talk about it. Yet you will talk about it to a lot of people.
You see everything you ever touch, feel, hear, smell, taste or even thought about has become a part of you forever. Inseparable.
Now think about this. There are successful people and there are unsuccessful people, positive people and negative people, happy people and sad people. They all have at least one thing in common. All of them. They have all had garbage dumped upon them in life and will get some more in future as well. It could be in the form of an abusive childhood, cheated upon by a loved one, left alone to fetch for oneself, denied education, forced into incorrect choices related to career, education, job, marriage. Some of us in reactions to our garbage might have taken to some form of harmful addictions as well. No one is spared.
You aren’t some uniquely hated person. Everyone has had some setbacks, despondent moments and disappointments.
Dr. Tony Compolo, a renowned professor of sociology says that regardless of what our past is and regardless of the fact that our past has influenced what we are today, our past need not be relevant or important to the way we see the future.
I do have a question though – if you keep talking about the crazy guy who dumped garbage upon you, is the past alive or not? – if the past is alive, is it then gaining relevance to the way you see the future? – Should it?
Lets look at a story.
Up in Alaska every now and then they had dogfights. This Eskimo had two dogs. A black dog and a white dog. Every weekend, the Eskimo would take the dogs to a little village and they would have dogfights. His two dogs always fought. This went on for several years until the dogs were too old to fight and they had to retire the dogs. One of the village people finally asked the Eskimo. He said,” I noticed that when the dogs fought, some weeks the black dog won while other weeks the white dog won but invariably you managed to bet on the winning dog. How did you always know which dog to bet on?”
With the slight grin the Eskimo said, “I always bet on the dog I had been feeding all week.”
Isn’t that an important lesson? The dog that is fed will obviously win. So if you feed yourself with the garbage of the past – who will win and reappear in the future – you or the garbage?
We all know that there isn’t a point in talking about or living in the past. Yet the garbage is a story told every now and then, if not to others, definitely by you to you.
This is a true story. A woman had to undergo a Kidney operation. She was sedated and the doctors were ready to go. Before the procedure one of the doctors had a final look at the latest reports and concluded the patient’s condition had become better and may be they can cure her without the surgery. The surgery was put off. Interestingly when the women awoke , she moaned and groaned, ooohs and aahs complaining of immense pain in the area where the surgery WAS to be performed. You see in her mind before she slept, she knew she would wake up with surgery pain and so she did.
In our mind before we sleep, while we are awake and before we enter our futures, we are conscious of the garbage, we are protective of it and we are careful of it happening to us – so it shows up – again and again. And when it does, it becomes a bigger pile. A bigger story. A sad story. Something you didn’t deserve at all. Its not your fault. How could anyone do this? It is sick. Why me? What wrong have I done to deserve all this? The world is crazy, bad and mean.
Oh! you poor thing – you are just one of us. Just another one.
We have past experiences. All of us do in some form or the other. We based upon them, remain guarded in the present and insecure or unsure of the future. Based on our past experiences and situations, we strive to create a future that we would like to live in. A better and happier life. To each that means different things and so be it. We constantly seek for something. That something might appear. That something might elude.
Seeking, though happens in the present. Realization might happen in the future. Why do we seek? Obviously because you want a better life, right? That would mean that life currently or in the past hasn’t been the best it could be had hence you seek to make it better. Thus it’s very obvious that the moment we seek, at that very moment you obviously don’t have what you are seeking and at that moment the seeking is combined with a feeling of inadequacy insofar as that particular desire is concerned.
You see constant seeking constantly invokes a feeling of inadequacy. At every failure of actual achievement of what is sought, we’ll encounter and come face to face with some form of garbage. That garbage will remind us of past garbage. We’ll think about it, replay it in our mind. Seek again. Though with garbage just discussed in our mind – it must appear again. And then must we seek again. It’s a cycle. It will keep occurring.
In all of this cyclical life events, we forget that NOW (right now) is innately perfect. Then why can’t we enjoy who we're with, where we are and what we do?
You might say and these are the responses I usually get that inadequacy propels achievement or that contentment might kill ambitions or that if we do not seek we might never grow.
In experience I couldn’t find this farther from truth. Simple logical observation – if you need inadequacy to make you achieve, then to forever keep achieving you need forever to be feeling inadequate. Thus to feel inadequate the garbage must continuously show up. You must continuously put away things that bring joy to situations of ‘if and when’. How sad is that? – That’s not achievement. That is simply accumulation of a few things that in reality happen or collect faster in a happy mind than in an inadequate mind.
You see your past, present and future is just a story. A silly little victimized drama that you replay in your mind to perfection. That you revisit to create your goals and ambitions. Goals and ambitions that you may go on to achieve as well, but the one’s conceived upon a dump of garbage is hardly likely to bring in contentment.
You might call it achievement. You couldn’t lie to yourself more if you did. I call it stupidity. A false purpose of life. A life that never lived because living happens in the present and your present was and is always inadequate.
I have interviewed innumerable high achievers and have coached many aspiring ones. From this experience of interacting with the very best of them, I can tell you this – yes, there are people who achieved status and things based on a propelling feeling of inadequacy – they are very few and very unhappy people. They could never understand why they are unhappy. They also had a very (VERY) few people who would look up to or want to learn from them.
The highest of achievers that you might encounter or meet are the one’s who live in the present. They have goals and they have ambitions too but based on ‘living’ in the present not based on ‘seeking’ for or from the past. Their goals and ambitions are in the form of faith. As Maxwell says, ‘if there is faith in the future, there is power in the present’. Be reminded that faith is not built upon a heap of garbage, it is built upon a happy present. What you build upon garbage and confuse for faith is simply ‘seeking’.
There is a difference between seeking and faith. Both might be realized but there is a difference. Seeking comes from inadequacy and faith from the abundance of the present. I need not tell you which one is a happier place to be in.
There is no problem. Never is. Never was. Never will be. There were situations, they are over. There will be situations, they aren’t here yet so they exist in imagination. THERE IS however a ‘present’ and is inherently and perfectly beautiful. Your living room in reality has no garbage, unless you bring it there. Your life has none of it in the present moment, unless you want it there.
Now is perfect. Live as if it is perfect and tomorrow will be too.
Tomorrow might not even be there. No one can say for sure that it will be. So doesn’t it make sense to live as if the only time is now and the only place is here?
Yours,
Chetan Walia
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