A Middle Piece (Part 3 of 4)

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3    |    Part 4

A Moment in Time

If all of life is actually lived in the present moment, then it makes sense to examine the present a little more closely.  The question I want to delve into more deeply is “What exists in a present moment?”  We already know that in our own subjective experience, we have these “things” called our past and our future, but what about what’s going on out in the world?  Imagine we could stop time and examine one “frame” of life – the world at one moment in time.  What would we see?  We’d see life, right?  We’d see houses, cars, roads, people, desks, trees, rakes, and ditches.  We’d see food, televisions, guns, tanks, buildings, and jewelry.  We’d see people being shot and killed in war.  We’d see other people dying from starvation.  We’d see others sitting on their private yacht in the Caribbean while others sit at work talking on the phone.  We’d see outcomes.  In any snapshot of life, in any moment, what exists is just a set of outcomes.

How did we arrive at the outcomes?  We end up at the outcomes of our lives based on the decisions and choices made over time in the past.  This moment you’re experiencing right now is a product of the past.  You’re reading these words because I decided to write them at some point in the past.  You’re reading these words because you decided to buy a computer at some point in the past.  You were able to buy a computer because you have a job.  You have a job because you went to college and because some person or persons decided to establish the organization you work for, on and on.  Every present moment is just a set of outcomes; outcomes that resulted from past thinking and action. 

This point, while obvious is nevertheless significant because, in life, there’s what is – the outcomes of life – and then there’s what you think about what is, and how you relate to it.  In reality, your life is just an outcome.  Your past is just filled with outcomes.  Today is just an outcome.  Tomorrow will be just another outcome.  Say whatever you want about it; it ain’t gonna change.  We don’t related to (and therefore talk about) our lives as outcomes.  We talk about our lives like something is wrong with them.  Something is always happening in our lives that shouldn’t be happening, when the reality is that whatever “it” is, is happening, and we spend our time trying to fix and change what already is!

Yes, of course, that people are starving is a horrible thing.  Yes, of course, your boss being abrasive is annoying.  That your child is failing algebra is cause for concern.  Relating to something as an outcome doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  It’s when you don’t relate to it as an outcome that you become stuck with it.  Begin today to see all that’s happening before your eyes as a mere outcome.  Right now, stop fussing over the state of your life.  All of it is just life catching up to what was said (and thought) at some time in the past. If you understand and master this, quiet all the explanations for why it is this way, and stop fixing life, then you open the possibility of really of creating a different future.