Don’t Lose Sight of the Present

I am so thankful for having been exposed to so many cultures throughout the world while serving my country. The career that I have chosen has afforded me the opportunity to experience 12 of 33 years living overseas in Spain, Italy, Japan and Bahrain. Even while serving stateside, I had the opportunity to travel and learn from other cultures around the globe. Fortunately, I have been able to share some of these experiences with my family.

After returning from six consecutive years serving abroad, we were thankful for being back in United States. We purchased a new home close to my new job, and enjoy the mission and people with whom I worked. I enjoyed living closer to our older kids and grandchildren. We found a great church, enjoyed the outdoor activities, like running around between the kids’ soccer, football, karate, and sleep overs. Life was really good!

That said, my son found reason to focus on what he no longer had, instead of all the wonderful things this move has afforded her. He missed his last school, old soccer team, and friends, and longed for many of the cultural aspects of each of the countries we lived in and visited, especially our assignment in Naples, Italy.

I realized that there seems to be a trend after each transition from one assignment to the next. Even as we embarked on new adventures and gained rich experiences in each location, a great deal of energy and focus was on missing all the wonderful things available at the previous location.

I was sympathetic to his feelings and realized that these changes are especially more difficult for children of that age. Nonetheless, this phenomenon is not unique to children. It goes without saying that many spend a great deal of time wandering on the past rather than truly enjoying the current moment. This is very concerning to me because I believe that we often miss the beauty of what’s in front of us because we’re too busy thinking about the past and this contributes to unhappiness.

In fact, this is not just a hunch. Matt Killigsworth, applied the scientific method to this problem and found that indeed wandering minds significantly contributed to unhappiness. Watch “Want to be happier? Stay in the moment | Matt Killingsworth” on YouTube below:

think drifting away in thoughts can be beneficial and we should allow ourselves to wander from time to time. Creative and innovative ideas often come at unexpected times because our minds have been mulling over something in the depths of our brains.

I am a planner and goal oriented, so I tend to spend quite a bit of time thinking about tomorrow. Success requires imagining who and where you want to be in the future and figuring out the steps needed to achieve that vision. But like many things, when done in excess, one can be inflicted with anxiety and even disappointment. So, I recommend pausing from time to time, especially when reaching important milestones along the way to enjoy the present success and recharge before heading to the next marker.

So the bottom line is that drifting away to yester-days from time to time to enjoy our experiences as well as envisioning what our tomorrow should look like is necessary. But, true happiness is experienced when you are enjoying today. A famous Chinese philosopher said that the secret to happiness is to live in the present. –Lao Tzu.