The Present

So, I am inside my head again. No really. I cannot get out. It is like an uncomfortable situation. Like when you get into an elevator and as the doors close you realize you are about to go 13 floors encased in someone else's gaseous vapor. Where did that come from? Was that me? No. That was not me. Good Lord! You go one floor- you want to get off. Please God, don't let anyone else get on...oh no, we are stopping. Yep. Great, she thinks I did it. I can’t look her in the eye...I have looked at my watch 9 times. Subtle. "It wasn't me!" Naturally, she gets off the elevator the floor before I do. I linger, embarrassed and angry. I get off the elevator. I watch the next poor sap get on.

Uncomfortable.

My brain itches sometimes. It has so many voices. And let's be honest, we all have the voices. In fact, the one with the ego is writing this right now. "I don't have an ego." "Yes you do". They battle. But I was thinking (or the more sane of my voices was thinking) that a truly medically insane person, you know the ones that pepper the sidewalks of New York, the ones that scream out loud as they walk having virtually stimulating conversations with themselves? These people are not unlike me. The only difference is...they say what I am thinking. Truly. Own up to it. If all of my voices talked out loud- I would be THAT person. You would be that person. So does that make them crazy or just 'unfiltered'? Does that make them lucky? Maybe I am missing out. Maybe letting all of my voices ‘talk’ rather than stifling them would be better?

I got off topic there...choral hazard…the cacophony of personalities dies to a quiet hum. “Shut up, I am trying to make a point.”

If I am so in my head and think so much then how then can I ever BE present? I am reading and have read more than one book recently about the power of living in the moment; about the NOW- about how to truly be alive one cannot be dictated by the past or the unknown. My problem is that I am constantly on the peripheral of a moment- even if it is an amazing moment. I am always aware but I teeter…I think, “If I could only go back and change…if only I had…” Or, on the other hand, I am in this divine moment and I catch myself thinking about the future- worrying over it- something so trivial. My mom calls it ‘borrowing trouble”.


So if I have one foot in the yesterday and one in the tomorrow…well, you have heard that quotation. I am basically peeing on today and when I realized this some days ago, when I had my AH-HA moment, I began to cry. I have never been present. Not in my whole life.

How do you do it? Tell me. Tell just one of the voices in my head, please. One of them has to listen. They are diplomatic.

If the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’ then how does one examine his life and not live in the ‘thought of it’ instead of the ‘now’ of it.

Maybe I should lighten up. People that love me tell me that all the time. But this is too serious of an issue for me to shake it off as nothing more than my ball of nerves squeezing down upon my existence. I want to know. How do I live in the present? I have asked all of my voices and they are no help. Maybe I should ask one of those misunderstood souls on the sidewalk. Maybe he knows something I don't.