The now…

All my posts start somewhere although I’m not always sure where that somewhere is. It could be an idea or some words or a photo or a doodle, but they all have one thing in common, they are all made in the now – even the ones that are in my past or my future.

According to some knowledgeable people animals have no memory of their pasts and no concept of the future, they live entirely in the now. Quite how this explains the migration of salmon, eels, swallows, caribou, penguins and the host of other animals who seem to remember migration routes, or the herd of cows wandering to the field gate at the same time each evening because they know that milking is in their near futures is beyond my ability to understand - but in the main I think animals generally do live in the now.

I write a lot about the now. In my fiction, my reality, even in the way I handle the past and wait for my futures – I was going to write ‘plan’ instead of ‘handle’ but of course none of us can really plan beyond the now – and it’s funny how the past and the future colour my interpretation of my now.

So, to understand and grab onto the now let’s start with the past.

I guess most of us would say that we have a skeleton or two in our metaphorical cupboards – I know that I have. Those one or two things which I’ve done that I’m not very proud of, those things that I don’t even want to admit to myself, things from the past that make me embarrassed. You know the ones. The ones that we all push into that cupboard at the back of our minds, locking the door and leaving them to gather dust.

Our skeletons - all rattling bones and fleshless calcium.

Things from the past, old done things, things that we wouldn’t repeat and wouldn’t do now, things long gone, done, dusted, and best forgotten if only we could.

We can’t change the past, just like we can’t see the future. Oh, we can adjust the future a little based upon what we are doing now, but the future isn’t totally in our control and our past is gone, without effect, unless we allow it to continue.

Why don’t we throw open the wardrobe doors and let those skeletons run away? Just look at them as they lope along. Funny old things aren’t they?

Why don’t we give ourselves and everyone else around us a break and live in the now?

Why don’t we forget what has gone and stop using it to predict what will happen? History has little to do with the now. The future has little to do with the now.

Why don’t we stop trying to say what will happen by looking at what has happened. The now is now - it is all that there really is.