We're here until we're not

We are here until we are not. We spend so much time trying to contort, control, predict, prevent, avoid situations in life. We spend time imagining futures in which we are maximizing our happiness. We are so focused on future happiness that present happiness is forfeited for lack of space in the brain. Happiness isn't our only concern. We think about future security, food, housing, health, money, sex, future everything. We live in the future. We gloss over the fact that "this moment" is full. We are sitting in the luxury of the richest nation in the world and our minds are wondering about in the slums of future negative thoughts. Or maybe we are imagining how we can add more to a life already full of excess.

Regardless of our motivation for future imaginations we cannot change the fact that we are here until we're not. Everything that happens while we are here is the "here" part...its all one thing. Every moment (seemingly good and bad) has its merit. Life should be savored because the "not" will bring about a change that will no longer allow us to process this life in the same way. Everything that is on the "not" side is a whole new adventure. Why not be here until we are not here? Fear keeps us from being here. Fear keeps us in the future, micromanaging every aspect of our life to keep us away from the "not". I don't believe in the elimination of fear, but i do believe we can become so familiar with our fear, so intimate with it, that it loses its power. This intimacy with our fear keeps us in the present. It allows us to be here.