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The power of now — and then: living in the moment?

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Striving to stay in the moment? Peter Sherwood is mindful that there’s no such thing.

I’m not one for looking back, content to punish myself worrying about the future. Meanwhile, I strain mightily – and unsuccessfully – to stay in the moment. Here’s what I missed on that subject in Eckhart Tolle’s incredible bestseller The Power of Now: It doesn’t exist. As soon as we say ‘now’ it’s gone. A bummer, I know, but that’s how it is. Still, I adore the philosophy, as far as it goes, and that’s no great distance.

Survival instinct gets in the way as  we peer cautiously ahead in sheer terror, a throwback to our primitive origins. Fight or flight. Today, it’s not wild animals or cannibals we have to watch out for, it’s multi-level marketing salesmen and techno freaks who’ve made the original Nokia phone obsolete.

Like a hamster on a wheel

Indian guru Jiddu Krishnamurti was big on the here and now. That was cool with me. But his version involved extreme sitting (silently), and a great deal of thinking. Not my strong suits, individually or combined.

I skipped the yoga boom for the same reason. If I’m not mobile, I’m wasting time, and I’m wasting the now, or rather the just after now. Frank Sinatra was asked why he stayed in Rome, while shooting a movie up near the Austrian border.His answer: “I’m an insomniac and I hate not moving.” So, Ol’ Blue Eyes took a chopper from his hotel to the set and back every day.

I get it. I’m obsessed with long-distance walking. I enjoy the scenery as I pass through it. Passing scenery is interesting; static scenery, on the other hand, stays unimpressively the same. Which is why I don’t understand people who buy a home for the view. OK, nice view. What’s next? Night time at The Peak? Excellent. What else have you got?

I don’t get it about meditation either. Never did, even as a kid. If I empty my mind while sitting, what happens when I get up to go to the toilet? Does my mind fill up again? And with what? And while it’s empty is there the prospect of a vacuum forming and my skull imploding? As a twerp from suburban Sydney, such weighty questions demanded answers. Sadly, my teachers were unimpressed and just beat the hell out of me.

But back to the now, actually the just after now. I could burst an artery trying to stay in the moment, or as close as possible given it was a nanosecond ago. I’m like a hamster on a wheel. It’s a depressing truth that as we age, time goes faster. There are many complicated reasons for that, all of them beyond depressing. Evolution has messed it up, with a set script of a linear life from birth to aging, illness and our  demise. Ideally, we should start out old with a nice house and plenty of money, and work our way backwards.

Anyway, enough. Time to reach into the fridge for a cold beer —to drink in the near future.


Peter Sherwood has lived in DB for 20 years. The former head of an international public relations firm, Peter is the author of 15 books and has written around 400 satirical columns for the South China Morning Post.

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