My whole life has been preparation for this day.
While perhaps a bit laden with overtones of productivity and singularity, there is some truth to this notion. At the very least, it is not too hard contemplate such an observation.
Against a backdrop of some kind of grandiose revelation, closer to the truth is the likelihood that any related revelation like this may be something like awareness and presence in the moment. Each moment and the experience of it is, at least, related to a prior, as well as to the next, one. In terms of days, each one adds one more element to that possibility — just as the past has informed my experience of today, so today will likely do the same for the future. What a vision to potentially live from, weather there is any particularly specific assertible claim associated with it or not.
Does this understanding change my experience of the current moment? Does it create more opportunity to be present to it? Or, does it move me away from it and present me with the constancy of the future, and the oft inadvertent attempt to live there, always anticipating, and never present?
Always there; never here.
When this is prevailing upon us, do we forfeit the very thing that allows us to be more capable of being prepared for whatever the future does bring? If the moment we are in is not being actually experienced, the growth that can come from it can be lost because we aren't actually participating in it. We are too preoccupied with our efforts to try to always be anticipating the next one.
Do we arrive then in the future, relatively unprepared, because of this habit to rarely more fully engage in our current experience and what each moment can teach us in the present?
Growth and development seem to be predicated on our ability to experience what is happening in the now. It is often solidified by subsequent reflection on what that experience afforded us (even if that is different than what we thought it was at the time).
Some examples?
What informs me in my current job are some of the experiences in my prior jobs.
What helps me in a conversation now often comes from what I've learned about listening from previous conversations.
My ability to engage with someone unfamiliar to me is...finish here.
