Hello, and Welcome Back!
I continue to receive a tremendous amount of heart-felt praise for writing these blogs, so… Here’s another!
Many years ago I encountered an interesting Chinese Proverb which simply stated,
“The best time to have planted a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.”
Perhaps you are familiar with it.
If you read it a few times you will see that it can have many different meanings and could be considered, “timeless”.
If one thinks about it, today is the 20th Anniversary of 20 years ago.
Take a moment to think about that. The 20 years is not significant, but that fact that the today of yesterday finally arrived today is.
In most cases this was the day you looked forward to all those years ago, the day when you would be rich, happy, handsome, smarter… you can fill in the blank, but it was the time you knew that all would be better in your life, right? And yet….
It’s been my experience that people, myself included, live in the past and promise themselves a better future… rarely right here, right now, and in today.
Voltaire once said, “We never live, we are always in the expectation of living.”
Most are stuck in some incident back in time and today is really something that happened 20, 50, 100, or even millions of years ago. That is what most are looking at and calling it here and now, or rather today. They don’t see what actually is, right there in front of them because their attention is still fixed on something in the past, or perhaps, something inside their heads is telling them they are not seeing what actually is!
I am guilty of this myself.
I saw a video of a woman who went after another woman with a baby on an airplane asking the mother of the child to move to another seat because she was positive the baby would start to cry and ruin her trip.
In trying to get the mother and child to move, the first woman made such a commotion that she was finally escorted off the plane. At some level, the troublesome woman was so certain her flight would be ruined that she went and ruined it herself! (I guess she just had to be right!)
She created the whole problem and then suffered the consequences.
But if the woman who got thrown off the plane really wanted to have a peaceful flight, what could she have done?
Perhaps stayed in the moment- the mother and baby were doing fine.
And had the baby begun to fuss, the woman could have found out what she could have done to help.
My wife did this once to help a new mother, she carried the baby up and down the aisle of the plane until the baby fell asleep.
Basically, get in there and create the future, or outcome that you want.
One might say that this is exactly what the troublesome woman did- ruined her flight, others’ flights, and then got thrown off the plane! I mean that’s what happened, right?
Keep that in mind, it turned out exactly how she didn’t want it to, and she did it all by herself! It’s actually quite funny and should give us all something to think about.
Are we really the authors of our own lives? Do we really create, at some level all that happens to us and others?
YES!!!!!! Good, bad, or otherwise.
I think it was Mark Twain who once said that he had suffered a great many hardships in his life- some of them which actually happened!
I love that quote.
Take a look at that, and think about the today you are living in right now. Is it actually today, or some recollection of something that may or may not have happened in the past?
Consider any aches or pains, body issues, or difficulties you might be experiencing right now. Oh yes, you are experiencing them right now, but do they belong to the here and now, that is to say today?
Something to think about.
This turned out to be a rather long and heavy blog, so I think I will leave it at this for now, and continue this blog over the next couple of weeks.
It’s already written, and it is pretty good if I say so myself! If you have any questions you can comment below or reach out to us on our website.
Until Next Week,
Take Care,
Dr. Dave
Please note, Dr. Dave does receive all your comments however he must approve them first.
Please give him at least a day to respond and check back on this blog post to see his response.
Interesting, it seems like the only pain which belongs in today would be an injury which happened today.
Hi Eric,
Yes, that can actually be. If one is punched in the arm really hard right now, it definitely hurts right now and in today. I was trying to emphasize the importance of being in present time when one looks at the world around them and themselves.
When the kids were younger and hurt themselves we would run an Assist on them, basically ask them, “Where did it happen?” “Where are you now?”
They would look and say that it happened over there, and now they are here, and after a few times asking this question, the pain lessened, they stopped crying and all was well.
Using the story about the lady on the plane, that Assist might have worked- Where did it happen? (The baby crying somewhere in the past) Where are you now? (On an airplane with a quiet baby today.) One can easily spot the differences and see that this incident is not the same as the one that may or may not have happened in the past. The lady on the plane was not in present time.
I had a patient when I was just out of school, a woman who was 40 years old. I went to touch her arm and she pulled it away saying that she had trouble with that arm her whole life because she was a breach baby. Somebody put that in her head, because a new born baby doesn’t know it’s breach, or that it automatically means a person will suffer with shoulder problems their whole life. She was not in present time and could not differential the difference between when she was first born and 40 years later in my office. She was still being a breach baby, and experiencing whatever someone told her would be the consequences of being breach. I have met a number of people who were breach babies with no difficulties at all let alone a shoulder problem.
Hopefully that clarifies better what I was trying to say.
Thank you for reading along!
Dr. Dave