Insight: Living in the Moment

This is a very philosophical post based on the ideas of something called zenprov, stay tuned for the next post to be a bit different than all my others so far.

In improvisational theatre, the purest and most engaging improv happens when actors are in "the present." The audience appreciates it more as it keeps the scenes fresh and alive. And it's this idea that I want to relate: how people seem to live there lives. Unfortunately, many of us are living is a combination of the past and future, but with the focus hardly ever on the present. Only by living in the present can we truly enjoy life.

To start, let's talk about what it means to live in the past. Living in the past extends on a broad term to holding on to something too much. This can reflect your ability to forgive, or perhaps even your ability to "let go" and move on in your life. Now, please don't misunderstand, thinking in the past is important. From the past we can learn from "failure" and give respect to the works of others before us, but in the context of this discovery, the right balance is necessary.

Moving on to the future! BACK ...TO THE FUTURE! Anyway...living with a mindset of the future can ultimately cause worrying and strife. Once again, don't get me wrong. Sometimes we need to plan so things don't go berserk in our lives, but I challenge all of us to live in the future only to the extent of preparation. In other words, giving yourself the best chance to succeed, but realizing that even though we may have prepared, life in that given moment can throw anything at us.

The only time we have control over is the present. Think about it, we do not have control of the past as it already happened, thus dwelling on it is futile. We do not have control of the future as it has yet to happen and we can never predict it, thus dwelling on the future is ineffectual. By dwelling on the past or future, we can open up ourselves to frustration, feelings of hopelessness, and feeling of powerlessness; however, in the present, we have the power to control our lives and allow ourselves to reach the peak of our capabilities.

In the present, there is complete total freedom. In Buddhism and Christianity, the philosophies of seeing greed, hatred, and delusion as evils or poison is a common thread all being codependent of each other. If you think about it, these three evils can stem from the refusal to live in the present moment. By living in moments of past and future, we are sacrificing the freedom in our lives. In your own life, how do you live? I have been asking myself this question every day for the past 6 months. Am I living in the present? Or am I dwelling in the past and future?

Living in the present does not just translate to human life, but it transfers to almost any aspect you can think of. Read the blog post below this to explore this phenomenon in advertising.

Insight: People tend to live in the past or future, but their true happiness comes from living in the present.
Human Life: We need to challenge ourselves to keep our minds and hearts on the present.

Please feel free to post your comments! I would love to hear your thoughts!