“We’re at Now Now”
“Everything you’re seeing now is happening…now.”
“what happened to then?”
“We passed it.”
“When?”
“just now.“
“When is then now?”
“Soon.”
Spaceballs: The Movie…what an endless treasure trove of insight. (C’mon…”comb the desert.”) I could quote it in most life situations. But this one I think is apt for the moment. Yes, this moment.
There are days when I wonder how much of a sucker I really am. Today I feel like a big sucker…because I’m stuck in the future and I don’t know how to get out. And I’ve been thoroughly taught to think that way. And I’ve learned it. Well.
I’ve been staying up nights with a crazy kind of anxiety…I’ll lie awake for hours, my brain spinning (needlessly) about things about to happen. That’s right, it’s my imagination spinning away…about a time to come…sometime. From this point today, that time always looks scary–grey, gloomy, cloudy, lonely. I never really smell the future but I imagine if I could it would smell like sulfur. (Ironically, this also describes Cleveland on most days, so maybe it’s the comfort of home I see before me). It’s also never going to come at least in the way I envision it. Someone said to me today, “The future is an illusion.” He was right. And I’ve become enamored with an illusion…that doesn’t even really look all that great.
We are at now now. I can’t will time to move any faster, nor should I. There’s a lot of moments between then and “soon” that should probably be paid some attention. I don’t really know why…then again, I think I’m the wrong person to ask…I live in then. But I’d like to live in now. It seems more colorful, more present, more immediate, more real. I like all of those things.
So why is living now now so hard?
I guess I’ll find out…probably “soon.”
[hmpf.]