It's Always Now

It is always now. I actually want to talk today about death. Now most of us do our best to not think about death. But there's always part of our minds that knows this can't go on forever. Part of us always knows that we're just a doctor's visit away or a phone call away from being starkly reminded with the fact of our own mortality or of those closest to us. Now I'm sure many of you in this room have experienced this in some form. You must know how uncanny it is to suddenly be thrown out of the normal course of your life and just be given the full time job of not dying or caring for someone who is. But the one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. It's not just what they did with their time. It's not just that they spent too much time working or compulsively checking e-mails. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns year after year when life was normal. And this is a paradox, of course, because we all know this epiphany is coming. Don't you know this is coming? Don't you know that there's going to come a day when you'll be sick or someone close to you will die and you'll look back on the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll think "what was I doing?" You know this, and yet if you're like most people you'll spend most of your time in life tacitly presuming you'll live forever. It's like watching a bad movie for the 4th time. Or bickering with your spouse. These things only make sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we're going to waste our time with that. There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. Now this may sound trite, but it's the truth. It's not quite true as a matter of physics, in fact there is no "now" when it comes to the entire universe. You can't talk of an event occurring simultaneously here and at the same moment occurring in Andromeda. The truth is, "now" is not even well defined as a matter of neurology. Because we know that inputs to the brain come at different moments and that consciousness is built upon layers of inputs whose timings have to be different. Our conscious awareness of the present moment is in some relevant sense is already a memory. But as a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. Now I think this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. In fact I think there is probably nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. But the past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated. It is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it, fleeing it, overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future. And the future never arrives. Even when we think we're in the present moment we're in very subtle ways always looking over it's shoulder, anticipating what's coming next. We're always solving a problem. And it's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present. This is not a matter of new information, or more information. It requires a change in attitude. It requires a change in the attentiveness you pay to your experience in the present moment.***

Hello my name is Annie and I am new to the Purnama Family 💖 I specialize in Lashes and I enjoy listening to inspirational speeches 🤓

When I was asked to write a topic for the newsletter, I thought about what I had learned lately. What were the kinds of things I think about. Now let me tell you- when I start lashing and my client nods off into La La Land, my little hamster wheel starts turning. I find myself thinking about so many different things, random irrational thoughts, however they always gravitate back to positivity, love, and personal growth. I think about the future, about how I want my life to be. But then time goes by and all the things I thought were important, didn't matter at all. This is when I listen to "It is Always Now" by Sam Harris to get a reality check.

I always find myself thinking about time. How the concept of time is a strange thing. Do you think that life is short? Or do you think that life goes by too fast? If we live to be the average age in Canada, almost 82, that seems to me like a long time to live. However, in the grand scheme of the Earth being 4.5 billion years old.. it doesn't seem like enough time.

How much time do you have left? If you died tomorrow, would you be satisfied with the life you've lived?

I couldn't agree more that too many people spend their time thinking and worrying about the wrong things, wasting the valuable time that we have now.

In my opinion, we don't truly appreciate our health until we are sick or injured. We don't start to appreciate our family or our elders until we start noticing that time is of the essence. As I reach my 28th year, I can't help but feel like I've been one of those people. I feel like I've spent my life looking for love, rather than loving the life I had, or even loving myself unconditionally.

So it had me thinking. How often do we find ourselves now, seeking validation than actually living our lives?? Do you live a life that is fulfilling?

Will you one day look back, and realize that you lived the same year over and over again and called it a life? Did you settle for a life that is comfortable, over a life that excites you? Did you spend your life wishing you had a better one? Wishing you had more money, a bigger house, a faster car?

I'm not saying that we should all quit our jobs and move to Thailand, but we should practice the act of gratefulness in every day life. Learn to be truly happy with where you are, what you have, and who you've become. And if you are not happy where you are, or with what you have, or with who you've become, then change it, you idiot! (Inside joke)

Time is the most valuable currency, however we treat it with such little respect. You wouldn't take a $100 bill you worked so hard for and throw it in the trash. Yet why are we so eager to waste our time? We can always make more money, but we can never get the time back that has past. We waste it trolling Instagram celebrities, using stupid snapchat filters, stalking past lovers perhaps (let's be real).

However you choose to spend your time is up to you, but at least becoming self aware that we are consciously wasting time, hopefully can make a difference.

The most important things I have learned are to appreciate the ones you love (like you're never going to see them again), never settle for anything that doesn't excite you, be kind to others, practice gratitude in daily life, and to always love yourself. You deserve happiness, never forget that.

Thank you for taking time to read my cluttered thoughts! Find me in the Style Lounge Monday through Saturday, I would love to meet you!

Love & Sunshine,

Annie aka ȶɦɛ ɮɛǟʊȶʏ ƈɦǟʀʍɛʀ ♥