Live in the “moment”!
Live “now”!
This is what we are told.
This is what we are supposed to do.
But what does this really mean?
What is this “‘in the moment”?
What is this “now”?
How do you do that?
How do you cut yourself off from the past?
From the future?
Can you? Can you really cut yourself off?
Is it really something you’d want to do?
And how can you even distinguish a “now” when you are cut off from the past and from the future?
If all we’d have would merely be “now”, how could we even recognize it as such?
Isn’t a “now” what it is only because we have the knowledge of our past and the possibility of a different future?
So that must mean that the real now is necessarily embedded in between our past and our future.
The past is what we call reality, because it already has actually happened and therefore it is real.
As a consequence the future must be possibility, because it hasn’t actually happened yet.
Future means freedom. The freedom of possibility.
The freedom of a possibility turning into a reality.
Yet: how can a possibility — one of many — actually become a reality?
How can this freedom be realized?
Does this happen all by itself?
No. It will only become a reality when chosen.
But who is it that makes that choice?
Does the future possibility itself choose to be realized and substantialized?
No. It always is the singular particular human being who makes this choice.
It is me. It is you.
But when? When do we make this choice?
In the real now.
Not the “now” that is nothing but a linear second that immediately is swallowed up by the next.
The real now is the blink of an eye.
In that blink of an eye you make a choice. I make a choice.
And I can only make an authentic choice because in that blink of an eye I can suddenly see my past clearly.
I than can make that past my own by accepting it as my past.
A past that is now full of meaning for me. Even its dark sides.
And at the same time I can overview all my possibilities.
Possibilities that stem in that meaningful past.
Only in that blink of an eye I can actually be in the real now.
Only when situated as such — outside of the chronological time — am I capable of making an authentic choice.
I don’t believe in a “now” that is reduced to a “time” where we forget the past and don’t see our future possibilities.
I don’t believe in such a conception of time that should be there only by prefabricated choices between things that are already reality.
Things that are there when I wake up until I go to sleep. Day after day.
This kind of a “now” seems barren, empty and devoid of meaning.
There is no meaning in this kind of “freedom of choice”.
But I do believe in the blink of an eye that is outside of the lineair and chronological time.
That therefore sees all time.
All the time that already has been for me and that still lies ahead of me.
The blink of an eye is the real moment of choice, because it is full of inspiration.
And therefore full of meaning.
It is everything but “living in the now”.
It is the essential foundation of living authentically.
