The Past, the Moment, the Future, and What Links Them

It is a commonplace in spiritual circles to be reminded to “Stay in the moment.” It means show up, stay present to what’s happening right now, don’t future-trip or lament the past. Be Here Now, to quote Ram Dass. 

Indeed. Good advice. 

My question in these scenarios often wanders to … if you aren’t here now, where the hell are you? I mean, do you even know? Just wonderin’. 

The illustrious Maureen Dowd, longtime and long-view follower of presidential vicissitudes, writes in this morning’s New York Times, “The president who had managed to superimpose his own reality on the world with startling success was suddenly being yanked into the same reality that the rest of us share. The Superman shirt wasn’t working.” 

In the past four years, I have often wondered if Mr. Trump was yearning for a past that only really existed in Matthew Weiner’s iconic television series Mad Men. January Jones’ kitchen in that video reality was the kitchen I grew up in. I recognized it instantly, but the reality of life in that time was much more complex and layered than Mr. Weiner allowed. 

In fact, life is always complex and layered. Even one life is. Not to mention the lives of an entire country’s population. 

Our pasts influence our present. Our present has an effect on our future. What links past, present, and future for each one of us, and for all of us, can be known, broadly, as narrative, a.k.a. the story. 

There is a trope that works here, or could, if we’ll come away from the insistent, addictive demand of our devices and return to our God-given imaginations. I’m sure you’ll recognize it. 

Let us begin this story that we are all living anew. 

Once Upon A Time … 

And before you click away from my words, be reminded, please, that those four words are a time-honored and time-tested way to begin a story, any story, but always a story that has a happy ending, aren’t they? 

You do want a happy ending to this political narrative, don’t you? 

I sure do. In the worst way. 

So in order to get to that pre-determined ending, we have to begin the narrative in the proper way, and we get to write the middle of the story. 

I use this exercise with clients upon occasion, usually when they’re telling me a dreadful story about something in their lives. The minute I suggest it, they perk up and are a little lighter. 

So … once upon a time, a young country chose a Sad Man to be its leader. Some people in the country liked what he had to say. Others did not. 

(Now the past is handled.) Onward to the present … 

This particular country liked to choose their leaders on a regular cycle—quadrennially. Every four years. Like clockwork. Four years went by, and the people chose anew. They voted. 

Now it took an exceedingly long time to count the votes of every person. And this particular group of people were in a big fat hurry all the time which means they weren’t too terribly patient. It didn’t matter, though, because they all had to be patient anyway. 

(The present moment, no?) Onward to the future … 

Patient or not, they waited till all the votes were counted. 

In the meantime, those who had worked for the Sad Man began to wake up from the sad spell he had used to enchant their hearts. It was a terrible spell, really, sad, mad, bad and all sorts of painful. 

Because they had to wait, the spell began to weaken. They woke up. They looked around and saw that their world was changing before their very eyes.  

Political futures, anyone? 

Some wanted to stay under the enchantment. They felt it protected them from change.  

Others wanted to break the enchantment forever. They felt it had hurt everyone. 

Still, patience was required, is required, and will be required until every vote is counted. 

Some people began to dream a new kind of future. Others dug in their heels to insist that things stay the same.  

They never do you, you know. Never. That’s not how life works, but people who are caught in the past forget this. People who are not in the present forget this, too. Only people who look to the future remember that things always change. 

And so, even before the actual, final end, we come to the end of the story.  

The people waited till the counting was complete. They acknowledged the count, made the changes that the count reflected, and began to create a future—for everyone—so that they could all live happily ever after.

 Check out the image here, Beloved. Do you see what’s missing? 

One little word. The word that actually changes the entire narrative for a whole people.  

All, Beloved. 

I looked everywhere for an image that included the word all. There weren’t any. Or none I could find. 

So that says to me that those of us who are here, in the present, and dreaming our personal and collective futures, have to take responsibility, not only for ourselves, but for everyone else as well. 

Counting will be completed. We will dream a new future. 

It’s up to us to decide whether they all lived happily ever after. Or not. 

We get to choose. 

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her website is susancorso.com.