Right here, right now

I’ve kind of been having a hard time writing lately, I have many posts in the making and I can’t seem to finish any of them. My head is all over the place and it’s making me even less productive than usual.

I’ve been in the throes of a stomach virus in the past few days, so I’m quite possibly dehydrated and delusional (please keep this in mind as you read this) anyway, today as I was driving somewhere to do something positively vital (or something to that effect) I started thinking that we live too long nowadays.

Seriously, for thousands of years we were old at 40 or 50, if we were even so lucky as to get that far. Nowadays we don’t even start really living until then. We are too old. Our best years are over before we’ve even lived a third of our lives. (Obviously this thought process managed to spiral completely out of control). All the things we dream of when we’re young, we’ve done or likely won’t get done by the time we’re only halfway through our lives (if that, much sooner in my opinion) so what have we got left?

I’ve reached all my major milestones, I went to University, got my first (and then second, third and fourth) job, I got engaged (!), then married (!!), then I had children (!!!) and now… well now I get to raise them and look forward to all of their milestones, but it’s not really the same is it? Sometimes it feels like the long walk towards death has started, and every minute that passes I’m just walking faster.

This is just a recap  of what my brain was flinging at me this morning. I practically had a panic attack in the car. I mean, seriously, at death’s door??

But in a way it’s true, at least for me, I’m a goal-oriented person, most of the time if I’m doing something I’m already planning the next step. And now I’ve started thinking that maybe that’s not such a good thing, not only because I have no clearly defined “next” right now, but also because if I spend my entire life thinking five steps ahead at what comes next, when do I actually concentrate on what’s going on right this minute.

I guess what I realized today (and yes, I see now that it’s obvious) is that life isn’t a series of checks to get off my to do list. 

So as of now I’m going to stop worrying about what the hell I’m going to do in the future, when we’re going to buy a house, when I’m going back to work, when this or that or the other happens because things are going to happen either way and thinking ahead does nothing but give me more time to worry or obsess. 

Or that’s my lofty goal for the month anyway. Although, I wonder… is it even possible to change our way of thinking so radically. I mean can a planner, an obsess-er and a think ahead-er really turn into a live-in-the-present-moment kind of person?

And this is the point when I start obsessing again. Will this work? What can I do to make it work? Here let me get out a pen and plan this out…. How does one stop. And. Just. Relax?

I took yoga for many years, off and on, and I loathed the meditation part of the lesson, because I simply cannot make my mind shut up and just “om” already. I don’t know how to do quiet, peaceful presence, I don’t know how to shut out thought. I mean, if I have a negative thought I know how to replace it with another more positive thought to get myself out of a funk (except for this morning, apparently), but to simply still my thoughts… impossible. So how does one live in the moment?

Cause sometimes I get the feeling that my life is passing me by, I’m living it on fast forward, and I’d just like to be present right here and now for a while. How hard can it be? Any suggestions?

p.s. and when I say living on fast-forward I don’t mean that I have to much to do, quite the opposite, my head is so all over the place I can’t seem to get anything done.