Living one day at a time

One of my biggest yearnings when I was younger was to, one day when I die, receive all the answers to the universe; to know how every event in history unfolded and why. I used to daydream about the fact that at a higher level, all things must be connected. I don’t have any proof for it, but somehow, I sense this deeper realisation of how we are all connected. I used to think that it would be wonderful to know it all; to finally understand how it all fits together; to know the great plan of the universe so to speak.

Have you ever considered what a blessing it is that you get to live and create your life one day at a time and that you don’t know exactly how it is all going to unfold? I recently watched the sci-fi series Devs. Devs is Alex Garland’s limited FX series about a mysterious tech firm that seems to have devised a way to know the future. It portrays a highly nuanced version of the Silicon Valley God Complex archetype. One of the main “antagonists” is Forest, a PTSD-suffering, megalomaniac tech genius. He firmly believes in the deterministic nature of the universe, i.e., that everything that unfolds has already been set in motion long before it happens.

If you had to know how your entire life would unfold in advance, it would simply take the joy out of living. It would turn you into a passenger in your own life story, since you would simply be waiting for the events you know will happen, to unfold as predetermined, very much life Forest was doing in Devs.

So, the fact that the years of your life don’t all arrive at once, but greets you day by day, is such a gift. It provides the opportunity for agency and mystery. With the descent of each setting sun, we can rest our heads and let the world take care of itself for a while. We go to sleep at night, knowing, or perhaps hoping (because who really knows if we will get to greet another day) that the dawn will bring with it a chance to meet our lives anew.

The hours that follow, before we return to sleep once more, are for us to decide how we want to live and learn, laugh, and grow. As Steve Chandler shares, we get to create our lives anew every day. Every day, you can start with the smallest unit of action available to you to create the life you want and set the direction of the future course of your life.

And living one day at a time doesn’t mean you ignore the future or fail to plan, but think about it, when do you actually live? When do you experience the events in your life? What time is it when you are experiencing the events of your life? If we asked that question of three people, one living in Vancouver Canada, one living in Sydney Australia, and one living in Johannesburg South Africa, who would have the right time? Different time zones mean that these three people would have very different answers to what time it is. And they would all be right, but they wouldn’t be in agreement about what time it is.

Also, as Eckhart Tolle urged us to consider, when you are experiencing your life, you are never experiencing it in the past or in the future. You might have memories about the past or fears and hopes for the future, but when your life is unfolding, it is always unfolding in the now.  So, the right answer to the question of what time it is, is it is now. It is always now. That is the only answer that makes sense and the only answer that those three people in different time zones could agree on.

Our experience of time here on earth is linear. And we describe it by referring to things that have happened as in the past, and things that will happen as being in the future. However, have you ever considered that perhaps time is not passing for us, but that we are moving through time? Our experience of the passage of time is not of us moving through it. Our experience is always in the now. And then we remember many different nows, but we don’t experience ourselves moving through time. That is probably one of the reasons we don’t notice ourselves aging and why some people are shocked when they look at the face in the mirror and suddenly don’t recognise it.

Experiencing your life one day at a time, brings both opportunities and challenges in manageable chunks. And even though each day holds the promise of joy, love, and abundance, we can also too easily fall into complacency when we lose perspective and forget that each day matters towards the ultimate destination we are setting in motion. We might lose sight of where we want to be going and get lost in the details of a particular day.

It is always helpful to remember that even though in the bigger perspective of our whole lives one day might seem insignificant, every day is actually significant, because you create your whole life one day at a time. And the thoughts, feelings, and actions you engage in, create your experiences and your future. What we think about and do all day, defines who and what we become and defines what are lives are about.

So, even though we get to live our lives one day at a time, it also benefits us to have the ability to anticipate the future and envision what we want to create and to keep the bigger picture in mind; if only to remind us to live with this bigger picture in mind. This is what Stephen Covey called beginning with the end in mind. It’s about spending time thinking about what you want to be remembered for or what you want people to say about you when you are no longer on this earth, and then choosing to live your life every day in ways that would create that legacy.

Seen from that perspective, every day does matter, because your whole life is made up of these days and these small actions – that might seem insignificant – but that actually shape your character and determine the type of person you are and what you will be remembered for.

If the future simply stretched out in front of you, you might experience terrible overwhelm and anxiety about everything that is still to come. Receiving your life in bite-size chunks of one day at a time, can lessen anxiety and overwhelm. However, only if we are willing to commit ourselves to living in the present and with reverence for the importance of this day – today. It’s when we focus our whole selves on this day, on being present in the here and now, on paying attention, noticing, appreciating, taking conscious and intentional action, that we can truly honour the gift of one day.

If you can shift your focus from what may happen years down the line and return it to the day that is before you right now, you may find a measure of calm and renewed confidence in your capabilities. You see, you can handle today, even if what you are dreaming about in the future seems insurmountable right now.

Eckhart Tolle invites us to question what is wrong in this moment right now. Wherever you are right now as you are reading this, pause for a second and consider the question. What is wrong in this moment? What is wrong with this moment, right here?

If you were to be real with yourself, you would notice that nothing is wrong with this moment. This moment by itself is just fine. It’s when we add our own thoughts, ideas, fears, etc. to it, that we experience emotional upset about this moment. But if we slow down and simply stay present in the moment, we notice that nothing is wrong with this moment. It is just fine.

And you can actually handle this moment as it unfolds, if you stay present to it. If you allow the flow of life to be what it is, you will know what to do or say in the moment. When you start worrying about the future or what might happen in the next moment, it mentally takes you out of this moment right here, and then your experience of this moment is lost. You are no longer present to how you day if unfolding, because you have chosen to retreat into your mind of fears and worries, of regrets and upsets, instead of allowing yourself to participate in life here in this moment.

When you choose to stay present in the moment, you open yourself up to the magic that can happen in this moment. You allow yourself to experience the events of your life while noticing the details. You give yourself permission to experience joy. Joy is not out there somewhere. Joy is not something you can find. Joy lives inside of you and is only available to you when you choose to stay in the moment.

With enough practice of just living one day at a time, and taking one step at a time, you may also discover that the future will take care of itself, because the future will no longer be this looming threat out there, it will simply be something that unfolds in the moment as you move from one moment to the next. And who knows, experiencing the future might just end up being something joyful. Ironically, when the future does arrive, you will not call it future. You will call it now, because that is all you really ever have, is now.