I am sad when I think of how many graduating seniors are told, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” or something like that. This kind of thinking is it just plain unskillful. It encourages young people to dwell in the future and pay less attention to what is going on around them, now, today. That is not helpful.
Thinking about the future and making plans can make sense. However, much of the future will take care of itself if those students have an open, skillful grasp of what is going on right now. Planning is nice and even helpful. It is so much more effective to put the emphasis on now, on today. Learning how to put the emphasis on now, on today is not a skill I was taught, and I don’t think my experience is unique.
If I am paying attention to what is happening today, it will be so much more obvious what consequences will flow into the future. The more I am skillful in understanding what is happening right now, the more the future will unfold in a clear manner unmatched by any skillful “planner”. The more I am emerged in what I feel about right now, the less I will invest in feelings about what might happen in the future.
I have had to unlearn my planning preoccupation. I have given up much of my old anxiety about the future and what might happen, even though the old habits about worrying seem to reappear from time to time. It simply works: the more I pay attention to what is happening now, today, the more I seem to understand the unfolding future. I don’t have to plan or make decisions. The options present themselves in such compelling, insightful ways that there is no real decision to be made. The “planning” is obvious, it is built into my understanding of what is happening today. I just have to pay attention. I don’t even have to “do” anything else.
I have two sons, and I sometimes get the impression that friends want me to worry more about them and their future. I would rather simply be more attentive to what they are doing right now, how they are living today, how they are engaged. The future is built into their today, and it does me no good to worry about where that will lead. I’m not convinced that it does them any good either.
Those students who have to listen to the nonsense about “today being the first day” would do much better to sharpen their awareness and attention on what is happening right now. If they haven’t been taught how to do that in school, today would be a good day to learn.