Birthdays are funny little things. We look forward to them yet dread them, celebrate them yet lament them, plan them yet attempt to ignore the fact they’re happening at all. That single twenty-four-hour period makes us crazy, doesn’t it?
This year, I’m attempting to make my upcoming birthday more like New Year’s Day: an opportunity to clarify, reassess, make course corrections ‒ only with cake and an earlier bedtime. This year I’m asking for two gifts. Firstly, a wheelbarrow, owing to a perpetually flat tire and a rusty, crooked frame on my current twenty-five-year-old model. Secondly, I’m asking for the ability to live in the here and now. You see, I’m horrible at it. Not gardening – I have a green thumb that practically glows in the dark. I mean, I’m horrible at living in the present. If you’ve followed my trials and tribulations with hireth and making plans to return to England, you’ll know this already. I spend way too much time wishing I were somewhere else. And that has to stop.
Or does it? Is the drive to be somewhere else at the centre of all human progress? If we were completely happy where we were, we’d never have left the ocean floor, or climbed down from the trees, or left the African continent or the tiny village of Flamstead where I grew up. Following that logic, predisposition to NOT live in the here and now, to NOT accept the status quo, could actually be the cure rather than the ailment. Now I’m really confused. Is my hireth an ailment or the cure for an ailment? Should I live in the present or not? Constantly think about going home or not?
Well, that puts a spanner in my birthday plan works. Maybe I should just settle for the wheelbarrow and call it good.
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Yes, we hear an incredible amount these days about living in the present but you’re right: having an eye on the future means we educate ourselves, seek out new technology, and behave with long-term health in mind.
I enjoyed The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo, which talks about our tendencies to “live” either in the present, past or future. It was a helpful tour of the 3 modes, and the drawbacks of each.
Happy Birthday!
Thank you for the birthday wishes and the reading suggestion. I’ll have to check out The Time Paradox. Maybe, like everything else, looking forward or backward should be done in moderation.