Now is Silence is Now

Now is just silence. Yesterday is an echo. Morrow exists not.

(Yup, that’s a haiku alright!)

By connecting the future or the past to the present we can identify a need for action (future focused) or for a correction (past focused). A third alternative is disregarding these previous two altogether.

When then the anticipation of tomorrow I will.., and the reflection of yesterday I should have.. falls away, only the silence of Now remains. Resisting the urge to fill this silence is no easy feat.

I’m going on a trip, and I’m bringing…

Having been raised with life as a template to fill and with boxes to check we’ve come to experience this tension between then and now as the default way of being. I could read a book, listen to some music, or do some exercises for a skill I’m learning; yet each of these take me away from the silence of the Now.

In those moments I am taking a trip to another time with the help of story. This works because stories are the epitome of anytime but now as they always deal with past or future, or both!

A story that deals with the actual Now is, unsurprisingly, very brief: “Now” — The End —

Every subsequent moment of Now dutifully takes over the baton in the relay race of time. Which leaves you with very little to talk about in a story about Now. Starting to see what I mean with the silence of the Now?

I have no ears so I must listen

The hardest thing has been to not treat the silence of the Now as an experience lacking something. It’s maddeningly tempting to waltz right into the next todo, another round of cringing about past actions, or to start fantasizing about how great I’ll do in my next game of Go.

One of the more difficult recurring experiences has been one where in an instant I am projecting myself forward, far into the future, and seriously doubting if I can handle living the rest of my life with this acute Now-awareness.

This usually doesn’t last long as I remind myself that Now only takes a moment. And I am definitely capable of handling this for a moment. Even if the series of moments is long and ongoing. No need to paint a long and heroic picture of me holding on through time; just dealing with this moment is enough, and it always will be.

Prey that isn’t moving either is, or soon will be, dead

For a gazelle on the steppe, or a rabbit in the forest, silence equals danger. When the background noise suddenly falls away, they know something bad is nearby.

That’s been the second hardest thing about the silence of the Now. My mind steps into the role of prey, certain it’ll be caught and devoured anytime now; with silence filling in for the role of predator.

My rational mind deeply empathizes with this prey-mind and starts offering up actions to take or lessons to learn; anything to break the silence and get a move on.

Later when I grow up in the Good Ol’ Days

Confession time; I think I’m guilty of accidental time travel. For the past 30ish years I’ve been living, anywhere between 1 week up to 10 years, in the future AND in the past.

Combining imagination and introspection is what allowed me to time travel. Actively reaching for an imagined future while meticulously revisiting past steps landed me squarely in the anytime but now.

A recent experience incapacitated my time machine and stranded me in the present though. Both to my surprise and appreciation as well as to my dismay and occasional dread. This technical malfunction of sorts has allowed me to deeply experience the meaning of deafening silence (of the Now).

You are holding on to rather than spending potential energy. Like patiently savoring the taste of your food rather than swallowing and immediately taking your next mouthful.

Yet how rare it is for us to focus on the direct experiences available to us in the moment.

I must do X. I should’ve done Y.

Having lived 30 years in the future and then suddenly after 30 years coming to live in the now, I wonder, if I’d lived for more than 30 years in the future, if that would be what causes other people to ‘break’. Because living in the future gives you the freedom to imagine and continue and postpone and procrastinate whereas living in the now can feel like it imprisons you in the now.

Stories are the go-to tool for escaping the now. For example playing music or the radio everywhere as it contains food for thought on ‘not-now’.