Life does not happen later. It happens now.
It is so easy to believe that we are waiting for something – finishing high school, then college, maybe moving to the big city, finding the right job, meeting the right love – and THEN our lives will truly begin. Especially for the more romantic among us, or perhaps just the novel readers, life seems like something distant, literary, special, irrevocably different than whatever it is we are right this moment. The dreams and desires and glittering future in the pages were always just beyond touch, locked up in words on a page, or in thoughts: someday I’ll… someday when… someday…
I never thought my life would be like it has been. I never thought my life would be what it is now. But it was. And it is. There are no backsies or do-overs. I can’t remake any of my choices. I could look back with a cascading flood of regrets. All those days wasted. All those opportunities untaken. All those failures of imagination. The years have slipped by, and now I am here, and it all counted. Every moment, every choice added up to my life right now. Life was happening while I was waiting for it to begin.
But spending more time on blame and regret only fritters away the precious moments of my life on yet another thing I will regret. Would I look back in a year, regretting my year of regret, another year of inaction?
There is only now, and the minutes and hours and years slip by, faster and faster. There is only one direction: forward, into the future, striding into the dark shadows and bright light that both hide and illuminate all my possibilities. There is only now. I can savor the fullness of my breath. The strength of my body. The taste of good food shared with loved ones. The laughter in my home. All the things that surround me now. And if there is something that I want, a thing I dreamed of, longed for, believed in, I must do it. I must do it now. Because now is all there is, and all there ever was.