There is something about acceptance that opens the
floodgates of happiness into your life. I don’t talk of accepting anything and
everything or being indifferent to painful moments. I talk about simply
accepting when things change, when a natural organic transformation occurs and
you realize that instead of living in the past you must let the present be the
most important thing in your life. For some people and I admit to being one of
them, the past assumes too much significance. I look over my shoulder so much
that it is a wonder I am not permanently lopsided. All of the looking back did
me no good whatsoever. I have not yet learnt to be perfectly in the present but
I am trying and perhaps one day it will come on its own.
The future is another kettle of fish entirely though. Even
if one schools oneself to let go, at least temporarily, of the past there is
yet the worry for what the future holds. Our entire lives, we are trained to
think of what we have to do in order to get where we are told we must go. A baby
needs to hold up its head, turn over, crawl, babble and ultimately walk and
talk to everyone’s satisfaction. Then the child must be admitted to the perfect
school with perfect teachers which is more of a fantasy than anything Terry
Pratchett could come up with. Then of course the child must do extremely well
in school – or at least well enough that the neighbours grow green with envy.
Every single moment we are trained to think of how to live for the moments to
come. Only children, as a friend of mine told me yesterday, are capable of
living in the present but we beat it out of them thoroughly given enough time.
Therefore I get back to talking of the past. No one can
leave the past behind them for it is what makes us who we are but we can choose
our reaction to it. There is no need for what is done and over with to claim
our actions or lead us on to a path of unhappiness. Choosing to let the past
weaken its hold over us is the first step to finding meaning in the present
alone. You can only control what you are doing right now. Try and do what you
do with hope and a prayer on your lips. Try not to wonder if it can be done any
better by anyone else or whether you will end up regretting doing it at all.
Simply take a deep breath and put your all into what you want to do, your
passion, your belief, your being and then you find you cannot go wrong.
I worry about the future when I cannot envision it. I worry
about it for my child even when I can envision it. Worry sours life to such an
extent that you would fear to try anything new. And yet there is one thing that
I have consciously changed about myself. In the last five years, I have done
things I have not thought possible for me to do. Despite feeling visceral fear,
I have done them. Some maybe laudable and some not but at least I have felt
alive at those moments when I decided to simply go ahead and act. That is why
living in the present is so magical - it makes you do instead of dream…
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