Greetings Readers!
Here is the next volume of our series — Letters to a Young Seeker (Catch up on previous volumes: Don’t Forget to Live, Break Bread with the Dead, Live an Examined Life, Carry the Fire, The Art of Optimism, Think Like a Mortal, and Trust Thyself).
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Dear Fellow Traveler,
The nineteenth-century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy advised, “If you want to be happy. Be.” Granted, Tolstoy’s advice is in the category of vague. Wisdom traditions universally stress the importance of “being” where you are. Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius, “The future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” Similarly, Tolstoy stressed that “there is only one important time, and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.”
Why do we reminisce (or ruminate) about the past? Why do we anticipate the future over simply “being” in the present?
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations,
Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost.
Is the inability to “be here now” simply a sign of our own lack of wisdom? Is it possible to “be” in the present while learning from the past (or planning for the future, for that matter)? Exploring the art of “being” raises more questions than answers.
