I’ve learned to never plan too far in advance because we really never know what will happen in our future. Ironically, I still have a hard time living in the moment because I’m so worried about what’s going to happen in two weeks, two months, or two years. It’s this never ending cycle of telling myself to stop worrying about the future and start living in the moment, and then I tell myself to stop neglecting my plans for the future and think forward. My head already hurts thinking about it right now! Deep breaths…!
My resolution this year is a simple one: smile more, laugh louder, and love harder IN THE MOMENT! I emphasize that last part because I seem to think about the moment after it’s already happened. It’s like when you go to a concert and spend 95 percent of the time videotaping the performance, missing the moment as it happens. You might’ve captured it on video, but it doesn’t hold the same value now. I think about smiling after the kind gesture has already drifted by. I think about laughing after the joke has already grown stale. I think about loving after the romantic thought has faded away. I’m left with regret, and I constantly wonder why I’m left with this feeling of emptiness.
In all honesty, I sometimes feel like I’m in an out-of-body experience the majority of my time here on Earth. I remember moments that happened but don’t feel like I was physically engaged in my interactions.
Recently while on a trip to Florida with my husband, I had a moment where I truly felt alive. We were on Miami Beach at this circuit party, the sun beaming down through the clouds, a warm breeze grazed against my skin while the music blared in my ears. To feel, to see, and to hear reality at that moment made me realize that it’s possible to live in the now. I never really believed it because for so long I’ve been stuck a revolving door of the past and future with no way of escaping to the present.
In 2020 and the start of a new decade, I’ve decided that this will be my chance to improve every moment of my life in the now while appreciating where I’ve come from and where I’ve yet to go. Enough worrying about where I’ll be living in a year or what job I’ll hold down the road because one thing I’ve learned is that things happen for a reason. No matter how hard I try to plan and prepare for what’s to come, life will always have its way of jerking me back to make me realize that a higher being is in control, whatever or whoever that might be. So, my job as a human being on this planet is to take every moment and embrace it because it’s one less moment I have left on this earth!