On Being Present #1 - Your Choice

I write about 4 categories: innovation, entrepreneurship, local art (and local artists), and this fourth category: being “present” - a small window into how I view the world. I hope that the posts in this category provoke reflections and insights in your own lives. Let’s start.

“The present moment is always here.

The present moment is never here.

Your choice.”

Sometimes I see the present as a fleeting, ungraspable wisp of time. How can I be in the present, when by the time I think to do that it is gone? My time view can be as small as minutes or seconds, but never “now” because now is infinitely small.

Sometimes I see the present as always here. It is always the present, whenever I look and whatever i see. The present goes on infinitely. It is never not the present. The past and the  future are just mental constructs of a series (or expected series) of nows. They are the ones which are never here.

When I am being present, I feel and experience the world differently. It is more robust, more tasty, more thrilling, more vibrant. I am alive. I feel the music. I feel the art. I walk in it. I am a part of the world, and I experience me as a part of it.

When I am not being present, I feel like an observer to my own life, to my own world. It is sterile and lacks life. I hear the music, but i don’t feel it. I see the art, but i don’t feel it. I feel apart from the world. An outsider to my own life.

I choose to be present.