Day 80 – Managing Our Patch of Now

It’s always Now. Now is our moment to moment contact with reality. Where the rubber hits the road you might say. In thinking about the concept of Now, I was struck with the image of a shiny steel ball rolling on a glass surface. Rolling represents time itself. The tiny point of contact where the ball touches the glass is a metaphor for Now. The ball cannot roll anywhere other than where it is at a particular moment. This is an existential limitation of its physicality, of its action, its singular point of traction. I think our Now experience is a lot like this. We can only roll, or act, on the tiny patch of time that is Now. Fair enough, I can only act in the moment.

That shiny steel ball rolling on glass is going somewhere. That somewhere is predetermined by its trajectory. The steel ball cannot change its trajectory, momentum carries it along, it cannot change its path. It has no mind, no free will, no spirit and is bound by limitations. You are rolling along though time; and, just like the steel ball, you have a trajectory and a momentum carrying you to a predetermined destination. We are bound by the fact of where we’ve already been. The line you have already traced through reality is fixed; the past and what you have already done cannot be changed. You cannot escape the singular patch of time that is now. These boundaries are inescapable. However, unlike a steel ball rolling on glass you are not bound to a predetermined destination! You can change it at will. You have power, you have free will, you have agency to change your destination.

Just as there is a past there is a future. We have the uniquely human ability to imagine the future and modify our actions in the Now to influence what it will be like. If you do not realize this, if you do not capitalize on this, if you do not take responsibility for this, then you are nothing more than a dumb steel ball – trapped, predestined, and at the mercy of the direction and momentum established in the past (no offense).

Now, don’t get me wrong. Changing your trajectory is not easy. It takes an act of will. In fact many acts of will because, there is inertia to contend with. Inertia represents the habits we have already formed. It takes will to overcome the inertia formed by your old habits and create new ones. You’ve been given the gift of free will – use it!

Owning the path you have already traced is critical as well. Sure, you, like everyone else, have been thrown into this world and sent rolling along in a particular direction toward a given destination. But, at some point, if you want to change your destiny, if you want to properly live, you must own where you are Now completely. Take full responsibility for your Now. This step somehow grounds us, through honesty and humility, a required reality check that allows a transfer of control to our spirit, and unleashes our free will to create the future. Thank God we are so much more than a steel ball rolling on a plane of glass.

So, what can we learn from this thought experiment? Accept that Now is your locus of control and only place of action. Own your past path and where you are now (current position) in order to make changing a possibility. Use your imagination to “see” a future, a destination you want to arrive at in the future. Build habits of body mind and spirit that you know will lead you there.

Ben Wagner (87)

Member The 365 Commitment

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