Now is the Most Wonderful Time

NOW IS THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME
You plant a seed and it grows. You move to a temperate climate location in the winter and sooner or later spring comes and then the heat of summer. The world revolves, the days progress, the nights come and go, the tilt of the Earth to the sun brings us first longer and then shorter days.

And in all this, what is the most wonderful time?

Right now.

How come? Isn’t it better in Paris, in April, with the love of your life? No. It’s better right now with the love of your life, which is you, or what’s left of you after you come into the now. The now can have words in it, can have talking and singing, but the moment I begin to say, “Now I am typing the word, ‘Now,’ “ that time has come and gone and the words are no longer true. The now is slippery, it moves along, and we can be there, but why bother if it is so fast? Why not hang on to remembering the last good time we had and hope and wish and imagine that we can recreate that moment again, which we can’t. That moment is gone, but we can wish to recreate a moment similar.

And even so where would our life be if we lived like that?

The same as most people’s lives are, a little string of highlights, with a lot of wishing and waiting and discontentment and numbed plugging away or frantic scurrying around in hopes that the next highlight will come along.

And what are the characteristics of these highlights?

We really like where we are. We are deeply and easily involved in what we are doing. We are breathing fully and deeply. We feel connected to ourselves and the world. In short, we are present.

Hmmm. This does suggest a way out of the waiting around dilemma, doesn’t it? Why not, be in the present right now, which, by the miracle of reality turns out to be the only time we can be present.

Boy, I seem to be going around and around, but it keeps spirally back, doesn’t it? Now is the wonderful time because it is where we are right now.

It sounds too easy to be true, but check out the advantages of the present:
1) We don’t need any new or different clothes to come to the present. What we are wearing now will have to do, since we are already here.
2) It doesn’t cost anything more. The price for being where we are right now has already been paid.
3) You don’t need anyone’s approval to be here now, since you already are here.
4) It doesn’t matter how cool or uncool you are, how beautiful or not so beautiful ( and by whose standards, anyway), how “fit” or “not fit” (again, whose damn standards?), how healthy or unhealthy. This is a country club that everyone can get into, the country club of now.

Even this now, you reading or hearing these words, me typing them, I can follow my breathing and so can you, I can notice where my fingers are and so can you, I can notice how I am negotiating gravity, what is pressing into the ground to hold me up, and so can you. I can notice the sounds of my present, and how the light is coming to me, and what that light is revealing and so can you. I can notice the shape of my body (not the “being in shape” kind of shape, but where the waist bends as I sit, where the legs bend, where the arms bend, that kind of shape, the real, in the now, this is the shape of my arms and legs and spine and neck and head shape). And I can go back to noticing my breathing.

One present after another. Plenty to do, plenty to notice, a lot of life is happening in this very moment.

No admission fee.

All are equal, all can do it, all have access, we all are already there. No travel requirements, except away from the chatter and into the real world.

Such a little shift.

Such a huge shift, a monumental shift, the biggest shift in the universe, along with the shift to love. And it’s the same shift, which we’ll come to later. For now, breathing in, breathing out, that’s a horse we can ride again and again, back to the present, back to the present, back to ourselves, back to our real and only home: this wonderful moment.

Try it and see. All you have to gain is your life.