A self imposed death sentence is to live your life as if the moment you’re in is unimportant, or worse, not real. Reality is as real as it gets.

We become conditioned to escape the present as though it’s a prison, and wind up in self imposed exile in our mind where we sup on the bread and water of past and future.

When your mind has a hold on you, you’re living your life on hold. You’re stuck.

“If and When” become staples of our vocabulary - two words that keep us held prisoner to the past and future.

This is your only moment. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but right now.

If you are a professional tennis player and win Wimbledon, this is your moment. The same is true if you placed dead last.

“It shouldn’t be this way” is our prayer to no one. The proof that it “should” be this way is that it is this way. No amount of musing, pleading or gnashing of teeth will transform a moment into what it isn’t.

Embracing the moment isn’t defeatism. It’s the only game plan that keeps life moving through you. You stagnate life anytime you deny the moment you’re in.

I’m not selling rose colored glasses here and saying “look on the bright side.” Those words are the staples of the snake oil salesman or those in deep denial. What I’m suggesting is to look on the only side that presents itself. When you treat every moment as real, you are in the flow of life.

Yin is yin and yang is yang. When you want one to be the other, life tells you to “Go Fish.”

Where yin and yang become one is where they intersect. That’s when one flows into the other; that’s when life moves through us. We stop the flow of life when we stage a fight to freeze or leave the moment we’re in.

Life is not static. We seemingly make it so when we build dams in our mind. They are designed to hold off the flow of life. Mental dams are illusions that keep us on a rock or in a hard place while life continues to flow by.  We miss the boat anytime we damn the moment.

Longfellow was a reality watcher and recorded this account:

Be still sad heart and cease repining;
Behind the clouds the sun is shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life a little rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Life is never stuck. It flows whether we agree or not. When we refuse to jump into the moment, we’ve chosen to be a bystander in life. We resign ourselves to vicarious daydreams that leave us wanting more of what we refuse to partake in - life.

This is your moment. You can take it or leave it. Accepting it keeps life flowing; denying it leaves you high and dry.

Take ownership of the moment you are in. This is the most freeing way to live. It saves us from playing the “no win” game of trying to control reality, and frees us to jump into life with both feet.

Yee-ha!

 

All the best,

John