More like being spread like peanut butter across everything except the present moment.
I’m Poonam and I struggle with the weightlessness of my mid-twenties.
The present moment is hard. I struggle with the future too. I’m at an age where it feels like every choice I make will switch the tracks on my future and determine what my next 15 years will look like or something. Or that if I don’t make choices now my life will be riddled with regrets. That level of choice-making screams one thing: “WHAT IS THE RIGHT CHOICE?”. So I spend much of the present moment letting anxiety seep right into my skin.
Should I buy a place? Should I switch cities? Is my career being set up the right way? Am I too comfortable? What about my relationships, am I sabotaging those? Do I have a sociable life right now, am I missing out on “things” out there? How do I stay connected with everyone I love if I make any changes to my life? What if I hate the changes? What if…?
I asked my dad what to do about this endless overthinking:
“You can put something in place to support your future but remember to be here in the now.”
Be here in the now. Easier said than done?
The challenge is:
- Letting those emotions I feel wash over me, not sink into me. I am not the emotions I feel and ultimately if I focused my mind on my breath for even a moment I would let go of those crippling thoughts. Aka meditate.
- Appreciating where I am right now. The people who are here with me right now. The time I have and the ability I have to use that time.
- Not letting the world around me tell me I am a failure because I do not reflect the narrative out there. I would’ve thought being less online helped this but the messages still get to me. Figure out what I want for me and me alone.
I find myself frequently and rapidly reaching for the past I can’t have any more or the future that feels paralysingly scary particularly when I feel alone and invisible. In fact, being seen feels like something I require to feel whole*. I realised even a tiny daily dose of being seen would shake off that need to be a grasping gasping mess of a human who looks for a time machine to solve my problems. If I’m seen right now, then maybe my existence is validated and purposeful.
How do you ‘feel seen’?
And a good question to ask is why I need this: “validated and purposeful”. It’s the ultimate human experience to find that meaning in your life, right? Having a reason for being. Or is it more about just being? And that we aren’t here for any specific mission, we’re just here by chance and you should just live while you’re alive rather than striving (or waiting) to reach a future you’re not guaranteed to see. Maybe there is no failure/success in life and we just are born – live – return to the earth. These are the existential questions I cannot let go of (help is massively welcome to let go). I wish I could just wake up and not deep what I’ve woken up to do. I wish.
So maybe, to help live in the now, I need to find ways of being truly seen in my day-to-day. Maybe remote working isn’t helping this cause. Maybe I need more DMCs, phone calls, letters… Perhaps I need a way to mark my existence so that I can know I’m here right now and not reaching for some unconfirmed future. I think that looks like being more creative, playing music, writing here, painting colours on a page, etc.
*I read recently that being happy is temporary but being whole is permanent.