Keeping Your Mind in the Moment

Some very wise person once said, “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.”  I’ve thought about and written quite a lot about this thing called “living in the now”.  I think I keep writing about it because it motivates me to live in the moment more often. As you might have experienced, living in the moment is very hard to stay conscious of and to do on a frequent basis.  But if you concentrate and keep trying to live in the moment, you are likely to do more and more of it.  And yes, I think it’s a great idea to write that down as a goal because, as you probably know, if you commit your goals to paper or on your phone or computer, you are much, much more likely to do it.

In Ernie J. Zelinski’s great book, The Joy of Not Working, under a section titled “Mastering the Moment”, the author says, “In some cultures, a moment can last the entire afternoon. Activities have natural starting and ending times not dictated by the clock. People don’t limit their conversations to fifteen or thirty minutes. Conversations start when they start and end when they end regardless of the number of clocks in the immediately vicinity.”

He goes on to cite a study that I found really surprising, and even a bit shocking. The study and research showed that most couples in North America spend only about 18 minutes a week in real conversation.

Zelinski also noted, “Out of 500 people surveyed by World Tennis magazine in a sex/tennis pool, 54 percent said they think about sex while playing tennis.” Wow, I play a lot of tennis and I don’t think I fit at all in that 54% group. Those tennis players obviously haven’t learned to live in the now, and I am quite certain if they did, they would win a lot more matches. I wonder how many people think about tennis when having sex. I think that might make it much harder to finish the sex round.

Ok, next week I want to write more about Zelinski and give you a few quotes from him and this subject of “living in present moment”, or the way I say it, “living in the great right now”.  I am also, due to feedback from readers, going to move my blog from Friday mornings to Sunday morning. This should give you some time to really ponder the subjects I bring up. So, look for the follow-up to this post next Sunday!