What is going on right now?
TAYLER RV | ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR | THE USD VISTA
It is November people. I am more than halfway done with my third semester of college and only a semester away from being halfway done with my college career. Finals are about a month away and Thanksgiving is LITERALLY around the corner. Just yesterday I found myself listening to Michael Buble’s Christmas album on Spotify to get into the holiday spirit.
What holiday spirit?! Thanksgiving has not even happened yet and I am already singing “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” All of this talk about upcoming events has me anticipating the future with excitement. Yet, I sometimes forget that life is also happening right now and if I am not enjoying it then what makes me think I will be enjoying it in the future?
When all the chaos of life piles up, I fail to remember the importance of where I am in the exact moment. Thoughts of upcoming tests, assignments, on-campus events, and deadlines consume my brain and cloud my thinking process of being present in the now.
It is also hard when the media and big corporations are promoting the beginning of the holiday season and the talk of ‘early-bird’ sales is already trending in advertisements. We can’t help but already start thinking about Christmas music because the outlets we use to stream any kind of news already contains these holiday images.
I am just one of those people who gets extremely overwhelmed when so much is scheduled to occur within the upcoming weeks that I start to stress out that life is going by too fast. And when life feels like it is going way too quickly, being overwhelmed by future events does not help that level of stress.
In retrospect I guess the real challenge is to live in the present moment. Yeah, easier said than done. For some of us that present moment schpiel is complete BS. But if we really take a step back to examine life as it is presently occurring, we might actually realize life would not go by so fast if we did not constantly ponder about the future.
Yes, it is great to look forward to the future. But most of the time it is even better when we are focusing on what is going on right now. Right now we are breathing and we are living. You don’t want to just survive throughout life, but you want to thrive: so thrive by being in the present moment with yourself or others.
So whether it is Thursday or Thanksgiving or Christmas day, just remember to be in the now.