There is no other time.
In any kind of functional manner. No time but now.
The past has already happened. It’s pretty big and important, but it’s also somewhat irrelevant. The past brought you here, brought you to now. But at this precise instant, it lets go and gives you…
Now.
Travelling through time, we feel the weight of our memories. The circumstances that have made us who we are and that inspire us to carry on moving forwards. Now is the time we can change. We can show that we’ve learned and be something new.
Be anything. Anything we think we can. Our paths come to now, and then diverge. We can pick a path.
And the future. That is far away (it’s only an instant away, but we never get there). It would be naive to rely on the future to bring you what you want. If you want to do, be or make something, do it now. Now is the only opportunity you know you have.
Every future moment is built on now. Without this foundation, nothing more can happen. Without now, there is no forward.
Don’t give up. Do it now.
Whatever it is.
Or maybe that’s too agressive and motivated. Maybe that’s all a bit to self help.
Now is the time we can feel.
That counts for something.
The past is nothing but ghosts of memory. The future is simply hopes and dreams and fantasies and fears. Constructs built mentally. The future is not real.
Until it is now.
And now. Well. Now I can feel. Now my whole body is alive, my whole body is awake (barely) and my eyes are drinking in the universe. My ears bask in music and birdsong and the thrum of cars in the distance. I can taste and smell the air of life.
Right now, everything here is real, new and immediate. This is not a memory. My moment, here (a train conductor whistles) is, as far as I can tell, actually happening. Every sense is feeding into my brain, which is building this construct of what is now.
It’s, technically, still a trick of the mind, the appearance of reality built out of perceptions.
But there’s a directness. If there’s anything out there, it is built into this immediately. Whatever the universe really looks like, this is the only way I am capable of seeing it, of knowing it, of being in it.
Now.
Why wouldn’t it be now? How couldn’t it be now?
Everything we understand would have to work on a different basis entirely if it weren’t now.
Now is what we’ve got. To an extent, it’s all we’ve got.
Breathe it in, and breathe it out.
It is yours (and everyone else’s). You will always have this, even though it’s gone the instant you name it, born again as something else.
Now is new. Always new. A gift for you, me, everybody.
Every chance and opportunity wrapped in a moment.
Now.
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Illustration by Rosie.
