Bloganuary Day 5: Do I spend more time thinking about the future or past?

Today’s prompt brought me back to one of my favorite songs – Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen:

Don’t worry about the future, Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing Bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind––The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Sunscreen, Baz Luhrmann

Here’s a video for your viewing (and auditory) pleasure:

I actually used to be a person that dwelled a lot in the past. I have too many failures in my book, stuff that’s fodder for an eternity of PTSD. I often used to find my mind wander into those memories, reliving all those traumas, often wondering how different life would be, if those things didn’t happen. I also used to think a lot about the few good memories I had too, precious little silver lining amidst all the clouds.

If you have read this blog before, you would also know that I am a certified day-dreamer. Even in those traumatic days of my troubled past, I used to dream beautiful dreams about the future. In fact, that’s what kept me going. I used to visualize how life would look like, dream about how I would go on in life to do so many cool things, and find ultimate joy and success…

In other words, I used to dwell a lot in my past and future – equal amounts of both, I should clarify.

Now, you might note that I have used the past tense in the above paragraphs. Nope, that was not accidental at all, it was a very conscious use of the past tense. It is because I do not dwell on the past or think about the future as much as I used to.

It is because, I am trying to live in the present.

And that’s exactly why I shared the Baz Luhrmann quote and the sunscreen song above.

Coming to think of it, what is past, and what is future?

Past, is just memories right? It’s your mind replaying things that happened to you in the past. You would swear by it, but it has recently been scientificially proven that memories could be inaccurate. Now, even if they were 100% accurate, do they exist? They refer to a past version of you (yes, the person reading this post right now is different from who you were from that memory), and they are abstractions at this point.

Future, is something that doesn’t exist. All we can do is postulate about things, and make plans. Thinking about the future, in my book, could be useful, especially if you are a dreamer like me who visualizes all sorts of utopian situations. Dreaming has helped me a lot, but even as a dreamer, I will admit that spending time dreaming has helped me much less than I will admit. Spending excessive times thinking about the future could turn out to be pointless, and yes, I am speaking from experience.

I have found that living in the present and focusing on the “now” is better than dwelling on the past or worrying on the future.

You can quote me on this – All we have is now. This very moment.

Our future depends on how we spend this moment. We can use our learnings from the past to work on the present in order to craft the future. Intentionally reflecting on the past or future might be helpful (“intentionally” being the keyword). I think we should spent more time on the present than dwelling on our past and future. The present is beautiful, it is breathtaking, and if we learn to enjoy every second that we have, if we try to find joy in this moment, it will help us a lot as we live our lives. (On a tangent, dear reader, I am honored that you chose to spend “this moment” with me, reading this post on my blog!)

I’ll wrap up this post with a quote that was a popular SMS/email forward back when I was in college. It’s essentially cliché, but if you think of it, clichés are clichés because they are repeated so much, and because they are true!