“And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.”
—Ernest Hemingway
 

es, but what if ‘now’ sucks?”

A pervasive question I hear often.

My answer is, “If now sucks, then you’re not really here ‘now’ but rather in your thoughts about now.”

You see, this being present business is some very subtle stuff. On the one hand, any experience you’re having in the moment is okay (because it’s the only experience you’re having in this moment, so it has to be okay. That’s what acceptance is).

AND, on the other hand, suffering occurs when you listen to and believe the voices in your head that tell you about what is happening in the now. They are directing your attention away from being present and to the discursive mind that is going to tell you what’s wrong with now. How now sucks. How it’s boring, unfulfilling, painful, wretched, awful, etc.

Even this isn’t technically a problem. Because judgments and opinions pop in all the time, it’s part of being human. It’s why you’d buy the red shirt instead of the one with polka dots and unicorns (unless, of course, you’re into polka dots and unicorns). It’s also where insight can guide you with its gentle whisper to “call your mother…” There are lots of pieces of information that can come in to fill the gap between your thoughts. Many directions your attention can go.

The place we get into trouble is when we suffer over what we hear in our heads by believing the voices and become identified with them.

Instead of just getting angry, we BECOME anger. We listen to, BELIEVE, and sometimes ACT on the voices. “Speak your mind! Stop letting him treat you like that! He’s a jerk! He deserves it!”

So we do. Only to later get beaten up by those same voices for listening to, believing, and acting on their “advice.”

But NOW can also be experienced from the point of view of “the watcher.” Attention can be on awareness. In this space, creativity, insight, joy, spontaneity, compassion, wisdom, clarity, peace, enthusiasm, and happiness reside even if your physical body is experiencing a tumultuous storm of activity.

NOW also happens to be the ONLY place from which you can create the future – a forever starting point. My favorite question to ask clients who are stuck is, “Given what’s happened and where you are now, what would you like to create?”

This question alone reveals the incredibly pregnant powers NOW has. It calls on vast possibilities to usher forth and fill you.

It begs us to ask ourselves instead, “If ‘now’ sucks, what would I like to create?”