In the fall of 2019, I moved to Waterloo and began my first year in university. Living in a new place with some of my closest friends, meeting new amazing people, and studying subjects that I’m actually interested in, the months that followed became the best few months ever up to that point in my life.
However, as finals week drew nearer, I gradually stopped appreciating and enjoying all the little moments that made this experience so wonderful. I consistently felt stressed and didn’t regularly take the time to pause and take in the wonderful situation that I was in. I was stressed about school even when going out with friends, and I justified it with “It’s okay, I’ll have this again next school term. Let’s get this term over with and I’ll be able to enjoy all this again next time.” Just like that, I spent most of the last few weeks of that first term working hard and looking forward to the next time when I’ll be able to properly enjoy everything again.
The catch is that my next term is a co-op work term and my next school term doesn’t start until the summer of 2020. So when news came that the school term of summer 2020 will be fully online, I was incredibly upset.
I was obviously upset that I won’t get to re-experience the residence experience that I had been looking forward to for so long, but I was even more upset with myself for not properly appreciating the last few weeks of my fall term university experience. I was upset that I made excuses to not enjoy such a privilege and that I was so sure I would have the same opportunity again, when I would supposedly do a better job of living it to the fullest.
A Brief Meditation
In any case, this little story should encourage a change in the way I deal with present situations and think about future events. I want to go beyond the cliché of “living every day as if it was your last” and shift the focus to something more realistic and practical — bringing ourselves closer to the present.
Consider yourself at this broad period of your life, are you currently looking forward to some particular event? Perhaps you’re looking forward to being done with school, or starting a new job you worked hard to get and finally leaving your old one, or even retiring. Perhaps your wedding is coming up (congratulations) or your birthday is soon (happy birthday). For most of us, we also share the eager anticipation for the pandemic to end and for everything to “return to normal” again.
Now consider yourself within a narrower timeframe, perhaps just within this week. Maybe you’re looking forward to seeing some friends soon. Maybe you’re having the expectation of getting some work done over the next few days. Maybe you’re simply looking forward to Friday evening and the weekend.
These all are definitely things worthy of being excited about, and it is all but natural to look forward to them. After all, the desire/ability to look forward to the future and plan ahead is integral to helping our species survive. It helped us find food and shelter, farm in accordance to the seasons, and persevere through tough times.
However, for many of us, the startling question is when was the last time when we weren’t looking forward to anything? When I was going though finals week, I looked forward to its end and I looked forward to hanging out with my friends stress-free. When I was hanging out with my friends stress-free, I sure enjoyed it very much but I also looked forward to what we are about to do next, the food we might get if we decided to get food later, and even just what I’m going to say next or what joke I might tell when someone finishes talking. When have I really, only lived in the present moment?
Previously I asked you to consider your expectations within the week, now I ask you, for the last time, to zoom in to your expectations right now. Maybe you’re looking forward to having lunch in a few minutes. Maybe you’re looking forward to finish reading this article so you can finally go do something else (😮). Maybe you’re expecting me to get to my next point already.
My Next Point
Again, it is not unnatural for us to be constantly looking forward to things, either big or small. In fact, our brain tends to derive more pleasure from the anticipation of a reward than from experiencing the reward itself. You may recall times when intense cravings nagged at you for hours, only for them to feel slightly anti-climatic when they were finally satisfied. As James Clear explains in his New York Times Bestseller book Atomic Habits (p108):
Your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them. The wanting centers of the brain are large: the brain stem, the nucleus accumbens, the ventral tegmental area, the dorsal striatum, the amygdala, and portions of the prefrontal cortex. By comparison, the liking centers of the brain are much smaller. They are often referred to as “hedonic hot spots” and are distributed like tiny islands throughout the brain.
However, as many of us have learned, especially through the past year, nothing in the future is guaranteed to happen, no matter how sure somethings may seem. The only thing that is indisputably guaranteed is the present moment. On a large scale, it is crushing to have events that we have been looking forward to for so long be cancelled, while we have little to show for the time we spent waiting for those events. On a smaller scale, we fail to properly appreciate guaranteed privileges in the present as we constantly think about unguaranteed opportunities in the future. These habits, accumulated over long periods, logically lead to a general feeling of unhappiness.
So here I will challenge you and I to fight this biochemical battle even though the odds have always been against us. This neural system has unquestionably helped us survive, but we have reached a point in our evolution where it is also starting to prevent us from living. We tend to spend most of our present time looking forward to things but not feeling happy enough when we actually get to them. Worse still, when we spend so much of our time looking forward to things that get unexpectedly cancelled. Thus, besides our time spent looking forward into the future, I believe that it is also extremely important to also allocate time for fully immersing ourselves in the present.
Importantly, note that I’m advocating for a balance between the time we spend looking forward to things and and the time we spend living in the present. It is definitely important to look forward and plan ahead, otherwise there would be a lack of direction and purpose to keep us going. On the other hand, it should be equally important to stay grounded and breathe in the present, the only moment we ever truly live in, or else all our previous planning and looking forward would have been for nothing. For me, planning ahead to know where I am going makes living in the present easier, as I am calmed by knowing there is a direction in the future as I give myself fully to the present. Similarly, being attentively present allows me to more effectively withdraw knowledge and experience from the life in which I am immersed, so that I can create better plans for the future.
Although looking ahead and staying present cannot take place simultaneously, the disciplined practice of each of them enhances the execution of the other. Beautifully, they are contradictory yet complementary.
Actionable Steps
I hate to introduce abstract concepts that cannot be acted upon directly, so here I will clarify what I think it means to be fully immersed in the present.
To me, there are two parts to this concept. The first is Focus — being aware of how your current sensations, emotions, and thoughts. I don’t think that we can consciously control which thoughts and emotions can surface inside us and which can’t, but I firmly believe that we can control which thoughts and emotions we respond to by aligning our actions with them. Let go of those that are irrelevant to your current task, and align your actions with those that are. When I’m working, I can’t prevent random thoughts and desires (to eat ice cream and watch YouTube) from arising in my mental workspace, but I can choose to stop thinking about them and letting them pass once I realize they have arose. When I’m relaxing, it’s pointless to tell myself to not think about stressful things, but it’s crucial to stop myself from thinking about such things once I realize I am, then let them pass, and return my Focus to my present objective. This is how we can fight this battle within our heads, and this is how we can start actually living and experiencing each moment.
Interestingly, this strategy can be applied to fixing many other “subconscious” habits as well. If you slouch your back all the time and want to correct your posture, you won’t get very far by setting yourself the goal of “I will never slouch my back again”. Instead, a much more practical and actionable (and thus more effective) goal would be “every time I notice I am slouching, I will immediately correct my posture”.
The second part is Gratitude — appreciating the things you currently have instead of looking forward to having something in the next minute, hour, week, or year. The ability to “be present” should depend largely on wanting to be present, and Gratitude of your present situation should then naturally form the core of such an ability.
Of course, remembering to be grateful of what you have is often difficult, especially during long, tough periods of time when looking forward to an end of the present time is much more preferable. To use the problems from my little world as an example, when I was overwhelmed with school during the last few weeks of my first term in university, I was too mentally tired to do anything but think about when the term will be over. However, it is also those tough times when remembering to be grateful is the most important. There were so many valuable moments that term that stayed untainted by any of the stressful work, which I had failed to realize. Those moments, whether delightful or stressful, are moments I will never have back again and had wasted because my mind was so focused in the future. This is where the first part comes in— being able to Focus, shift through the overwhelming emotions, and choose the best course of action helps you remember the importance of Gratitude. Then, Gratitude in turn helps you enjoy being present and thus able to better Focus. And again we see complementarity.
This is a skill, like any other, that requires consistent practice to gradually master, and the first step is to become aware that a need for such a skill is even important.
As I mentioned in a previous article, I think that there are always things to appreciate no matter how terrible the situation. If you’re still reading this article (thank you), then at the very least you have got a brain capable of processing information, as well as time left in this reality with some more present moments to experience. Regardless of whether they will be good or bad, this unique opportunity is something that many others will never get to have again.
There’s another quote from James Clear’s Atomic Habits (p130–131) that I think closes the discussion on Gratitude beautifully, and is extremely actionable and empowering.
"…You have to wake up early for work. You have to make another sales call for your business. You have to make dinner for your family.
Now, imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You “get” to.
You get to wake up early for work. You get to make another sales call for your business. You get to cook dinner for your family. By simply changing one word, you shift the way you view each event. You transition from seeing these behaviors as burdens and turn them into opportunities."
And as always, I am incredibly grateful for your reading of this article.
Interested to discuss more? Please email me!