Past, Present, Future

I've been told that if you dwell too much in the Past, you get depressed; if you dwell too much in the Future, you get anxiety; and if you live in the Present, you're at peace.

I think I've been told this because I have a tendency to have one eye on the Past and the other eye on the Future.  This makes for a life experience that's something like an Ice Cream Sandwich of Misery, with a cold, cold, jittery anxiety-flavored filling sandwiched between two wafers that are made from a sense of sorrow for the golden times from the Past that I'll never get back again.  Sometimes it's the sense of sorrow that's the filling and the anxiety that makes up the outside.  The order isn't as important as the ingredients, here.

This is what I do, though.  I remember a lot of details about things that happened way back.  One of my "favorite hobbies" when I can't sleep is to drag out conversations I had as a pre-schooler, or a 10-year-old or young adult, and replay them and pick apart all the things I said wrong or that I shouldn't have said or maybe I should have said and didn't. That delightful little hobby has enabled me to stay up around the clock more than a few nights!  What a helper!

Or I'll look at a calendar and think about something that happened years ago, On This Date and the happy memories that initially rush in will start to oxidize around the edges as I notice the memory of people who have passed away, or friends I've lost.  Or, more recently, I'll see pictures of my daughter as a baby and lament the fact that she'll never be that little again.  

On the flip, I spool out my "What If" far into the future and get myself all scared or hopeful or otherwise anxiety-ridden about a bunch of possibilities that are nothing more than speculation.  A neighbor of mine calls this "Trying to control the weather."  It's an exercise in futility. It's an exercise in worrying for the sake of worrying, too.  Not good stuff if you want to spend your mental energy on anything else.

This idea of living in the Present bringing a kid peace is very intriguing to me.  It's really all about not worrying about the Past- that happened and you can't change it.  The past is ghosts.  And it's about not spooling your worry out into the Future.  It's okay to have a vision for the Future, or a plan, but borrowing worry and hurting your own feelings over stuff that really might not even happen.  At least, it hasn't happened yet.

But living right smack in the Present... just focusing on the tasks at hand.  Staying busy living in the Now.  

I don't think I can do a darn thing about World Peace, especially not right now, Friends, but I can bring peace to my very own world by trying to stay focused on the here and now.  It's a journey, though, Friends!  But I'm going to try!