Tag: #presence

An invitation to stop using time-saving hacks

Last weekend I volunteered to help make food at an event. It was a pretty basic task. I had to restock the drinks bottles on the shelf, refill the snack bowls and make some pizzas in the oven.
I was surprised to find it was the most relaxed I’ve felt when making food in about a year. The basic task of cutting up pizza slices was bringing me more joy than similar tasks usually do.
The big difference was that I was taking my time.

There is no past. There is no future. There is only now.

I generally like to keep on top of my work, but recently I’ve found myself procrastinating. Sometimes I know a deadline isn’t coming for a while, so I can put it off. I believed that the time to do it was sometime in the future.

But it’s not just the future – it’s also the past. I found myself lingering around past thoughts. A conversation someone had with me. I relive the frustration or anger, as if it were happening today. Suddenly these emotions are seeping into the feelings I’m having right now.

Most of us tend to see-saw between these alternate realities. Either we are stuck in the past, or wondering about the future. But what if neither of them actually exist?