Chasing the future

Passing time

As a teenager, I can honestly say that growing up is hard. Who better to vouch for this fact than someone who’s in the heart of the storm?

Growing older is a bittersweet journey. There come days when all you want to do is grow up, and then there are days when you wish to stop time so you can hold onto the present just a little longer. Nevertheless, growing up is something we all have to do whether we like it or not.

The biggest waste of one’s time is the anticipation of the future. Mind you, anticipation and preparation are not the same thing. Inevitably our entire life is built around the next step, the future, and we can best prepare ourselves for the road ahead. But the anticipation of the future is a downward slope, which leads away from the present. While it’s important that we make peace with growing up, living in the present is equally important. Anxiety and stress about the future aren’t what’s going to secure it. Rather what you do in the present contributes to what’s in store for you in the future.

Tug of war between the past and the future

The older we grow the more independent we get and the more we start despising growing up. We mourn the lost innocence and wonder, we miss having no responsibility. We wish we could go back to simpler days when worry wasn’t on the to-do list. On the other hand, we sometimes look forward to the future, we can’t wait to be independent, and we want more exposure and experience in our lives. Amidst these conflicts, if we lose track of finding joy in our otherwise mundane lives, then rather than living life, we’ll just end up passing our time until there’s no more future left to plan out. Planning for the future is crucial, but centering our lives around it can send us into overdrive. It’s often the case, that in anticipation of the next step, we end up procrastinating the actual act of taking it, and end up spending our time in only planning it.

Change is a process in which either you sink or swim. It’s easy to sink in the many prospects of your future, but if you learn to swim in it then it can be really enjoyable. Neither living in the future nor wanting the past back is a healthy and sustainable mindset. Rather accepting the past and living the present in a way that will indirectly influence your future is the most efficient way to balance our lives.

For instance...

I can offer several examples from the world of a teenager, and here is one such analogy;

As a student, there’s always something coming up next, after each test there’s another, and after each assignment, there’s more work, so you’d barely realize when the 10th boards are near. A year before these boards all our time is spent in anticipation and preparation of them, and then what next? Well, then you’d better rinse and repeat for 12th boards.

This would prove unhealthy as it’s a mechanical way of functioning to catch up to the future. What we don’t get, is that you aren’t supposed to catch up to the future at all, you’re just supposed to stay in touch with the present.

A healthier approach to the same analogy would be the following;

Instead of worrying over what's next, you just take one thing at a time and perform to the best of your abilities. That’s where you’re putting yourself in the present. Secondly, after each test, after each exam, you take away what you can do better from it and then completely forget about it. Cut the crap with the regrets and guilt and rather use that energy and time for the next one. That’s where we let go of the past. And lastly throughout this process, by only contemplating the nearest future, you’re cautious enough not to be unprepared. But you are still not trying to catch up with the distant future, thus losing time without even realizing it.

This is the best example I could offer because as a student I too go through the motions with studies and end up passing time instead of optimizing it.

Conclusion

So like I said, growing up is an eerie premonition of the future, in which we can sink or swim. In short, it’s a bittersweet experience. Being more mindful of what we are doing can really go a long way, cause we end up correcting our own tendencies in preparation for the future. This preparation is better than any stress or anxiety can achieve. As cliche as it sounds and as over-said as it is, ‘living in the present’ is something that we still forget to apply in our everyday lives. We only come to realize it when it’s time to say ‘ I don’t know where the years went

Re-visiting my previous statement:

The future is not something we have to catch up to, and the more we try the more of the present we end up losing. The future isn’t going to go anywhere, but the present sure is, so why not savor the moment for now?

And lastly to conclude with one of my favorite quotes;

“Time does not pass, it comes”