a lot of my life has been squandered on trivial pursuits of the moment that always seemed so monumental and important at the time but really added nothing to - and in probably more cases than not actually detracted from - my life. this fallacy of nowness interrupts personal and professional growth in so many ways, and it’s taken me a long time to come to this realization. i’m still evolving on this issue, and don’t have any final answers regarding the proper balance between flexibility and adherence to the long-term plan, but i do have some theories.
the truth is, i didn’t realize i had a problem until i got married. my wife, shanima, is a plan addict. she’s rarely swayed by the spontaneous and tends to become disoriented when things don’t go according to plan. i, on the other hand, am something of a trapeze artist when it comes to swinging from one plan to another. and if a plan totally falls apart, i am generally able to revel in the entertainment that creates, and to fluidly adapt. in its raw form, my ability to be flexible is a positive trait. it becomes problematic, however, when i let my ability to flex become the substance of how i live my life. what i mean to say is that living in the moment isn’t a long-term plan, and it wastes so much of the capacity that i have as a living breathing thinking and learning human to grow myself consciously over time. in order to do that, i need to make - and force myself to stick to - my own plans.
it is interesting for me to contemplate the reason that i preferred so long to live in the moment. i didn’t want to be beholden to anyone or anything. i didn’t want to commit to one thing because part of me feared missing out on some other thing that had not yet presented itself as an option. the problem with this fallacy is that one of the major consequences of living moment by moment, at least in my experience, was that i was missing out on more opportunities than i was availing myself to because i had no long game. no savings account, no credit and no capacity to even contemplate anything more than a vague and unspecific version of the high life in my future. and as a result of this, i became a wage slave, living paycheck to paycheck and working at least as much as i would be working in a career, and for less money to boot.
another aspect of the fallacy of nowness is the appearance that life is easier when you don’t concern yourself with the long-term, that we can’t know what will come tomorrow so we should live our best life today. the problem is that when life doesn’t end today, and tomorrow comes again and again and again, spewing itself in our faces, it brings its own challenges. we risk getting caught in a loop of fulfilling only our basest needs, a daily cycle that is even less desirable than the alternative, which is the path of career, the game of chutes and ladders. to be blunt, there are plenty of people living in the moment who spend their days trudging through subway cars telling tired tales of their need for just one more dollar to get something to eat, or a ticket to some other place where things are easier that they’ll never actually find.
i write all of this to give encouragement, as hard to believe as that might be. i want to give encouragement to those who struggle to actualize themselves, those who fight against their own inability to turn down the temptations of nowness and instead keep eyes on prizes that are so much more fulfilling than a few moments of aimless bliss. i know that it is possible to make the shift from a now person to a now and then person, and i can tell you with confidence that the latter is far superior in every way.