Living In the Moment can Be Overrated

We’re supposed to be at our best when we live in the moment. When we’re in a special zone of consciousness, focused only on what we’re doing right then, no other thoughts intruding. A kind of solitary confinement of the mind.

This is an extremely rare condition for me. Tennis and bridge, sometimes. Writing, a bit. Reading almost never. As a child, I could be completely absorbed by a book. I miss that so much.

In fact, almost all of my existence is spent with multiple thoughts about my past, my present, and my future banging around inside my mind as if I were Scrooge and had Marley’s ghost as a constant but far more agreeable companion. Seldom scary, often making me laugh. Because these intertemporal thoughts can be both pleasing and enlightening.

I find that memories often enliven and give greater significance to ordinary moments of my day. An example. Last week, early one morning, I was walking Sophie my little Shih Tzu in Central Park when we saw a couple of large dogs jump the wire fence protecting the Great Lawn. The dogs raced around the enormous green field, chasing each other, barking, and ignoring their owners’ increasingly loud and irritated calls to return.

I was momentarily proud of Sophie for being so comparatively well behaved, until I immediately recognized that my pride was unjustified. Tiny Sophie could never clear that fence, and she is by nature and breed a Zen-like, mostly obedient little creature who craves only attention, affection and approval.

Then I thought of an incident thirty years ago, when I had taken my three year old daughter to an indoor play space whose most prominent feature was a gigantic pool containing thousands of small, brightly colored plastic balls. My daughter loved to cavort among the balls. So did all the other toddlers.

When it was time for us to go (probably because I was bored), my daughter ignored my suggestions and then my commands to get out. As a young, first-time father, I didn’t understand just what a helpless and hapless position I was in. Under serious consideration, but  ultimately rejected was the strategy of launching myself into that vast sea of tiny balls. I would have been a ridiculous, lumbering, clumsy Gulliver stepping among the partially submerged Lilliputians, their parents all watching.

So, instead I alternated between an escalation of stern threats and shameless bribes Nothing worked. An eternity passed, and my daughter finally emerged, but clearly only when she herself had tired of “swimming.”. Although I hadn’t crossed the Rubicon of diving in, I still felt the sting of shame as we left, having undoubtedly made a fool of myself in the eyes of the other parents.

All this came back to me in an instant as I watched the owners of the large dogs try and fail to call their pets back to them. I was living in two moments simultaneously, each enlivening the other. The memory of the sea of balls was funny to me. And it gave me perspective and sympathy about the plight of the owners whose dogs, I imagined, would only come back precisely at the moment when they decided their romping had been sufficient.