Thursday, July 03, 2008

Are we there yet?

When do we actually arrive?


From when we are born we are in a constant state of preparation. They prepare us so that we can get in to school. And then, they prepare us to go to college. This is just so that we will be prepared for the future.


When do we actually arrive at the 'future?' Where is this 'future?'


Once we finish college we think we will arrive there. Perhaps we do. We are suddenly faced with a whole new life of 'adulthood' before us. And we find ourselves fumbling, floundering and flustering. Has all our young days been spent preparing for this? We continue to do what we have best learned to do - to prepare for the future.


So when do we arrive? I believe that we arrive only when we learn that life is happening in the here-and-now. While we live with one eye on the future, we need to appreciate and relish the present. We need to be aware of the sands of time that we hold in our hands… and feel its grains even as it slips through our fingers… When we have learned that, we have arrived.

8 comments:

SandyCarlson said...

So true, Bungi. I remember as a child taking in this idea of preparing for the future to the exclusion of the moment. It has taken most of my life to learn the lesson and see every beautiful moment for what it is.

God bless.

(Thanks for your Happy Independence Day greeting. This is the one day on the calendar I take a break from fretting about what goes on in DC and what DC inflicts on the world.)

lemon said...

whoa..hit me like lightening! so true..

Marsha said...

i understood this one... yaay! and the one before this too... :o)

Anonymous said...

Yet another good post... Bungi.

We are by virtue of our ‘blue print’ conditioned to think of ‘there’, just as your title implied… “are we THERE yet..?”

The ‘here-and-now’ is the child of ‘there’… both are connected and inter-dependent; role of ‘there’ is inevitable as a parent for it to deliver the ‘here and now’; one must have the ‘there’ defined to realize the ‘here-and-now,’ and one must then consciously choose to ‘celebrate’ the arrival of ‘here and now’. In the process, we are inclined by the imposed pace of life to switch on another bulb of hope and rush towards the drawing-boards and re-draw the ‘there’ towards which we then drive on the chariot of dreams … and then, it becomes a constant journey that never ends, and the ‘here-and-now’ becoming the Inns in which we visit for a short stay before we set on our path again…towards the re-drawn ‘there’…

It never arrives, or so we live in an illusion that it never does. And if it does, they are seen just as a ‘milestone’ on our long path towards a ‘there’ that we see in the distant horizon… a milestone that we are at times able to look back and reflect on, and most often the joy of which is only experienced while we exercise that reflection – years later. Isn’t there a joy in it, yes there is. Did we not miss the joy of celebrating the here and now, true too.

It never arrives, and if it does, it is dwarfed by the size of the ‘next-there’ that we would have already designed and set forth for the morrows to come…; or if it does, its colour appears faded and its sound of celebration sounding feeble thus diminishing the apparent value of its arrival, comparing to the colour and voice of the ‘next-there’ that we would have begun to see and hear in the three-dimensional canvas of our dreams… and it goes on and on…

The marking of an interest in the ‘there’ is what serves as a propeller to activate our functions of the current hour – here and now… the more balanced and complementing they are, the more merry we become, I suppose!

SandyCarlson said...

Bungi,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your kind words. You made my morning. God bless.

That Squirrel said...

I hate the feeling of time gone forever! I wish we could get some of it back.

Bungz said...

Sandy - Thank you for dropping by... I have been wondering about being hooked to the future as well. It's like a drug...

Lemonade - Hey, thanks for dropping by. Glad it helped you...

Marsha - Phew...

Shahir - Indeed. You have captured the essence of what i was trying to say. Keeping one eye on the future is important as that propels us towards progress; looking at the present is important as that is where we can celebrate; and looking at the past is important too as that is the foundation on which we continue to build...

Anju - I suppose it isn't entirely gone forever as we are the result of the things that happened in the times gone by... Ah well... Easier said... Indeed there are things we desire which cannot be...

Vadapoche said...

Hmmm, very true I have a favourite quote that goes "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday"
The problem is by the time we realize this we are in tomorrow.