LIVING IN THE FUTURE

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is fun and common question for adults to ask little children. But we can also identify this as one of the first examples of how we became domesticated to the idea that our life starts at some future point.

Too often we put off our own happiness until some event is realized the future. “I will be happy when I graduate from college/when I get married/when I get the right job/when I have children.” The result is a cycle of setting and achieving milestones, only to realize after each one is achieved that it failed to do for for us what we had thought it would. This is why many great masters of all traditions have stressed the importance of living in the present moment.

Practice

By practicing awareness you realize that happiness and joy exist in the present moment. If you can’t find them here, you won’t find them anywhere.

Living a Life of Awareness

~ Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.