Have you ever felt like you’re constantly waiting for the perfect time to arrive? The feeling that you have to go through the week then you’ll enjoy the weekend, get through this year then the next will be great or get done with this project then things will fall into place after that and you can finally catch your breath. But when each of those times pass you never seem to arrive to that point of satisfaction you thought you would get to, instead you simply get caught in yet another set of unpleasant events you can’t wait to get out of and the cycle starts all over again.
In some instances you can even feel as though the last chapter was actually better than the current one. You might even wish you could go back to the “good old times”. The moments you so badly wanted to end start becoming attractive compared to your current circumstances. The sticking points that made you want out seem to fade away and you can start to see some good things you missed whilst in that moment. The question then arises when really is this best time of ones life and how does one know when they’ve reached it.
I asked myself this question back when I was in primary school and the realisation I made then has formed the basis of my perspective. I had recently transferred schools and one night I found myself reminiscing about my old school and how much fun I had back then. The memories of the friends I had left and the fun times we had popped into my head. There were quite a lot of old experiences I was realising in this moment that I had not paid much attention to but now wished I could experienced again. These started to seem like they where the best days of my life and the thought that they’d already gone by made me a bit sad. Whilst having those thoughts something else clicked, this feeling wasn’t new and I’d experienced it before. It was when I was still at the old school and had just come from pre-school. I remembered that I had missed the many pre-school activities as well. Not having to do any real work and simply spending the day playing, napping and all the other fun activities had seemed like utopia compared to primary school. In that moment it had felt like I’d missed the best time of my life back in pre-school when I did not have to do any homework. I was back at the same point of what I realised was potentially a cycle.
After having this flashback I realised that when I was at the point I wanted to go back to pre-school I did not want to be at my old primary school and actually thought it sucked. Yet here I was again at a different school missing that moment I had thought was unpleasant. The failure to sit in the moment and enjoy what was present had cost me an experience whose value I only saw later on. This made me question whether I was going to feel the same way about the moment I was currently in. The short answer I came up with at that moment was a simple – YES. The next stop, high school high school had double the subjects we currently had, class ended at 4 pm compared to our lovely 1 pm and there’d be less time to play and less fun stuff to do. The focus shifted from wanting to go back to the past but to not want to lose what I had in the moment once I went into the future. It was time to be fully present in the present.
I’ve found that we usually spend a lot of time reminiscing about the past or dreaming about the future instead of actually living in the present. Whilst the first two are important to appreciate and reflect on where we’ve been and create the picture of where we want to go next, I think it’s much more important to actually focus on the present and live it. We are moving through time in a linear fashion which means we never really get the luxury of experiencing the same moment more than once. We can always think about past moments and dream about future moments multiple times but experiencing moments is once off. My past experiences have made me want to constantly be aware of what’s around me in the current moment before wandering off to the past or the future. If there is nothing worthwhile I can usually freely relive some memories or imagine the experiences I want to experience in the future, I just make sure it’s not at the cost of present experiences. Without stopping to appreciate the now I would probably wake up one day at the finish line without having really “lived”.
This principle that the best time is now obviously won’t apply to every situation in life, notably bad situations that one just wants to escape. It’s just a good reminder to sometimes take a step back and think if there’s something you have now that you won’t have tomorrow that you’ll terribly miss and just paying a little bit more attention to it. Don’t lose the good times thinking they’re in the past or future when they could be right next to you.
The best time is now!