Living in the Now. The Here. The This.

So, I’m trying to turn a new leaf here. New week, new attitude. New Zen.

Or something like that.

Recently, I’ve been reading a bit about the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton.

First of all, I had no idea what a Trappist Monk was, but according to Wikipedia (the search engine of my generation) they are an order of the Roman Catholic Church that began in Normandy, France. These Monks take on three vows: Obedience, Fidelity and Stability. They also believe in silence, but don’t take vows of silence. Apparently they only speak when necessary and do not like to partake in idle conversation (su-weet).

Anyways, Thomas Merton wrote a lot (what else do Monks do in all that silence?). He focused on the relationship with yourself, with God, with other people and with nature. He basically believed that if one of these was out of sync, all of them were.

And it’s probably true.

One of his main theories that I’ve fallen in love with is this idea of “NOW-HERE-THIS”

Now=Time
Here=This Place
This=Whatever you are doing at that very moment.

Merton believed that if you were able to achieve a consciousness of Now.Here.This. you’d be living your life to the fullest.

I think it is so easy to live life waiting for the next moment that we really do miss the Now. I’m always hoping for May to come, waiting for Christmas, counting down till whatever milestone I have in front of me.

This semester alone, I’ve spent every week waiting for the next. Planning travel so far down the line that I hardly know where I am at any given moment. Last Wednesday a colleague of mine asked me where I was on Monday and no joke, it took me a half hour to remember where I had been.

(And I highly doubt it was early onset of Alzheimer’s).

I rarely take the time to breath in the moment I am living. To fully take it in and realize that this specific time will never, ever be mine again.

We’re all trying to find our place in the world---looking for the next best thing, but I’ve got to remember to live in the present and cherish what I’ve been given.

One of my favorites, Susan Blackwell wrote: “You are where you are right now. You cannot change that. Whatever you did 10 minutes ago and what you will do in 10 years is not right now. You’re wasting precious time, as you will never get this second back. We have such a limited time on this earth, with whatever you are surrounded by: don’t worry this all away. The universe put you in this place for a reason. Make the best of this minute, this second, right here, doing whatever it is you’re doing. Please.”