What Now?

Hold onto this moment. Enjoy it's uniqueness, and savor the brevity. Although there are many moments piled together, uploaded, and hyper linked, there are none more real than the one your are experiencing right now.

Take even the smallest second to stretch into your day and think about that. Fully engage the present, not because of what now will become, or what implications now has on the moments that have just passed. Feel it. Live it, because this is it.

Right now is yours.
Eventually doesn't exist.
Someday already passed.

This is not about meditation. I promise I'm not going to pounce on you with some philosophical or theological insight. There will be no request to participate in any ritual sacrament. I just want you to absorb, through every sense at your disposal, all that you can about this moment.

This is the reality of your life. This is truth. The world that is set before you is the current product of all our communal thoughts and deeds. The way things are is just the way things are. Accept it entirely with no preconceptions, assumptions, or doubt. All the chaos, insanity, and depravity we observe and participate in each day are irrefutable facts already rough hewn from the mountain, etched in the stone, and cobbled together into the foundations of our existence. Every path that has ever been intersects here. Every choice ever made forms this. Here we all find ourselves, connected, merging into the perpetual present.

Together we are sharing a world filled with horrific and beautiful things. From the mundane to the awe inspiring, we are surrounded by a hurried tumult of complicated motivations fighting and clawing to find their means. Tides rise and fall. Worlds whirl about their axes. Stars explode. Galaxies collide. Universes blink in and out of being like so many candles on a cake, as time soldiers on to an unknown end. Yet here we find ourselves, in this moment simply being. As if oblivious, we pose for the iris of an unseen camera as it records now for all eternity.

That snapshot is us.

With all the darkness in that frame, if you were to zoom in to any point far enough you could still see the spark. Within all the structures, systems, relationships, and organisms lies that briefest flash of pure crackling energy that even now fuels you. It seeps through the cracks in even the most monumental piles of rubble and ruin. It burns across the most vast plains of disparity. It engulfs and consumes even the most treacherous avalanches of apathy. And it grows more intense because you have just acknowledged it.

Even the darkest times have a seed of happiness, a desire for strength, or a promise of hope. Somewhere right now, someone fights for their life, and hangs on against all odds because what you have in your possession is something worth fighting for. For as much harm as we have done, we have seen crops grow in the wasteland. We have witnesses moments of peace in nations of perpetual war. We have tasted victory after moments of epic failure. We have heard the ringing laughter from the soul of a terminally ill child. Therein lies the spark.

The solution to any problem lies in fostering that spark in yourself. By taking the time to focus on it, you begin to train yourself to spot it more readily around you. Soon you will see it every where, hiding in plain sight, waiting to be coaxed out of the dimmest places in your life. As it builds strength it will feed the sparks of those around you, igniting a passion for joy that drives all things. After all, happiness is a skill, and like any skill must be practiced.

Even a single flame ignited burns away some fraction of the most pervasive darkness. There is no star in all of creation that could hope to burn brighter than the unification of our infinite number of sparks. All of those tiny lights, when encouraged, nourished, and aimed in concert, compose a blinding spotlight capable of illuminating all of creation.

Despite whatever seeks to hinder you today, you have the knowledge that you can overcome. It isn't going to happen because you change something in the past. You won't succeed because of the grand plan you are waiting to implement, just as soon as the time is right. There are things about your story that cannot be changed. There will be unforeseen obstacles that come crashing into your path. Just acknowledge that things happen the way they happen because that is the only could have possibly have happened. Accept the new reality, and continue forging on. Victory comes when you engage every moment by acknowledging the situation for what it is, standing up, ignoring apathy, embracing the challenge you face, and acting boldly as if you are the hero of a story that is currently being told.