We talk often about now as if it were something we could hold. We tell ourselves to “be present,” to “live in the moment,” as though now were a location we could arrive at and remain in.
But the moment we try to grasp it, it is already gone.
Watch the second hand on a clock. At what point does now arrive? How long does it stay before it becomes the past? If we look closely, we begin to see that even now is a concept. A useful one, perhaps, but still an idea layered over something far more fluid.
And yet, here we are.
Alive.
Breathing.
Experiencing.
We cannot step back into yesterday, nor can we leap ahead into tomorrow. Those exist only as memory and imagination. What we actually live is the space between them. The in-between. The unfolding.
This is where life happens.
Most of us are conditioned to live elsewhere. We replay what has already occurred or rehearse what might come next, and in doing so miss the subtle richness of what is already here. We move through our days slightly ahead of ourselves or slightly behind, rarely landing where our feet actually are.
But joy does not live in memory, and it does not live in anticipation.
It lives in the unnoticed spaces we pass through without seeing.
Consider ordinary moments.
Standing at the sink, feeling warm water on your hands.
Walking outside and noticing the weight of the air, the sound of distant traffic, a bird calling from somewhere unseen.
Sitting with someone you love and listening without preparing your response.
Nothing remarkable is happening. And yet, everything is.
This way of living does not require effort or discipline in the way we often imagine. It does not ask us to observe life from a distance or manage our experience more skillfully. It asks something simpler and far more honest, to recognize what is already true.
We are not watching the river flow. We are moving with it.
This is where peace arrives. Not because life becomes predictable or easy, but because the struggle against it softens. When we recognize that we are part of the same movement as everything else, the impulse to resist, divert, or cling begins to loosen. Trying to stop what is already unfolding only exhausts us. Trying to hold what is already passing slips through our hands.
There is relief in seeing this clearly. Life continues as it always has, but we are no longer standing against its current. We move with what is here, responding rather than bracing, allowing rather than grasping. In that allowance, something settles. What we call peace is not something we achieve. It is what remains when we stop fighting the way life moves.
We often imagine that living in the present means pinning the moment down, capturing it, or making it last. But the present cannot be held. It can only be lived as it arrives and as it changes.
When Ram Dass encouraged us to be here now, he was not suggesting we remain in a moment that has already passed. He was pointing to something far more alive. Now is not the instant that just arrived and disappeared. It is the continual unfolding that moves with each breath. What we call the present is not static. It is living, changing, arriving again and again.
Be here now.
And now.
And now.
There is an old joke about a bar with a sign in the window that reads, “Free Beer Tomorrow.” People pass by day after day, always a little tempted, always a little hopeful, only to discover that tomorrow never quite arrives. In the same way, we keep leaning toward what comes next, missing what is already here.
Yesterday cannot be revisited, and tomorrow never shows up as promised. What we actually have is the space between them. This is the place of noticing what is happening and recognizing that we are happening with it.
Life does not need to be justified or completed. It is already here, already happening. And yet we rush about as if something essential is missing, as if we must arrive somewhere else before we can begin to live.
When we live in this middle space, between past and future, that urgency softens. There is a quiet joy in realizing that nothing else is required of this moment than to be lived.
We are not late. We are not early. We are here.
And that is enough.
Jan
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