I have developed a fully-functional planning mind. As soon as I sit on the side of my bed in the morning, my mind jumps into thinking of “what’s happening today, what’s next.” My planning mind has served me well. It allowed me to function well in a work position that required that I anticipate the future and prepare for it. I have the ability to design objects or actions in my mind. I sometimes spend as much time planning a project as I do in executing the plan.
My planning habit has begun to seem strange. I am aware how much I seem to run from the future as soon as it becomes the present. The purchase of a model railroad car is not nearly as enjoyable as the anticipation of the purchase. So much of my energy is put into a future that may never come. I now know this, and the planning habit is now having less influence.
I know that the only reality I have is the one that is actually happening right now. However, my planning mind has conspired with my active memory to lure me away from what is most real. They constantly call me to venture into an imaginary world that has already vanished or is yet to appear. It is a world that exists only in my imagination.
The present is where I find the most ease, respite and joy. However, my undisciplined mind resists the leash of staying in the present.
I find that even when my mind attention is focused on what is happening right now, there can be a tension to leap forward into what is yet to be or wallow in a past memory. My attention often pulls me into the past or into what might happen next. In that instant the present moment, with all its energetic reality vanishes, never to be repeated.
I think that is this planning mind with its great ability to fabricate a possible future and regurgitate a memory of the past that has allowed my human species to dominate the world. Unfortunately, it often functions so well that people like me lose contact, awareness of what is going on right now. We have learned well how to interact with an imaginary future or past world and sacrificed much of our ability to live in the present.
I love my planning mind. I just want to keep it on a short leash so I can pay attention to what is happening and have a real life in a real world.