Over the last several months, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about how my life would be right now.
I imagined that when I entered my new life as A Writer, I’d be overcome by a feeling of bliss. I pictured myself waking with a smile and greeting the sunrise with a slow round of yoga, then sipping tea and gazing out at the lake while I wrote. Since I’d be writing a book about Peace Corps, I thought that the feeling of Tanzania would seep into my life here, including the slow daily rhythm and the uncluttered state of mind. Each evening, I imagined that Ron would get home from work and I’d throw my arms around him happily, and then together we’d eat a wonderful meal that I’d had lots of time to cook.
And that is how it was…for about two days.
But by my third day as A Writer, I found myself inexplicably irritable. In the morning I awoke with my checklist at the forefront of my mind. What if I didn’t get my blog revamped before leaving for Christmas? What if I didn’t have time to organize gifts for my family and a sitter for the cats? And why oh why was my mind racing?
By evening, I was even worse off, snapping at Ron and needing a glass of wine to calm me down. It felt remarkably familiar. In fact, it felt exactly like I’d often felt before changing my routine. And I suspect that’s no coincidence.
A few months ago at a party, I had a long conversation with a Buddhist friend about living in the “now.” I told her I was catching myself fantasizing about the future and had realized it was a bad habit. Even though the “now” was pretty good back then, I still saw the future as better: I’m not at peace now, but that’s because things aren’t perfect. When they finally are, in a few months, then I’ll be at peace.
The truth is, even when I had this conversation, I was already living in a future I had once imagined. During grad school years earlier, I had fantasized about being done with school and living with Ron and our cats on a lake. Now here I was. So why couldn’t I feel like I’d already arrived?
It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:
When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. But when we do not have a toothache, we are still not happy.
At the party, my Buddhist friend agreed it was best to practice being happy now. If I only practiced imagining future happiness, then I was training my mind to always think of the future. Inevitably, when the future arrived, my mind wouldn’t know what to do except continue anticipating more futures.
As with any skill, living in the now takes practice. It won’t come naturally once a future “now” arrives.
But despite that wise advice, I was unsuccessful at abandoning my fantasies back then. And now here I am. I’ve trained my mind to think constantly about checklists and to feel frantic, and I’m finding that that habit doesn’t automatically turn off when the situation changes.
Sigh. Looks like it will take some actual work for me to change my mental state and feel at peace.
