344. passing moments
Life is a series of fleeting moments, each destined to be experienced for the "last time." The last visit to your childhood home. The last swim in the ocean. The last time you see your parents. Most of the time, we don’t realize these moments are "lasts" until they’re gone forever, leaving us with the bittersweet truth that we can never get them back.
This inevitability — that every moment will pass — ought to make each one precious. Yet we treat the present as nothing more than a stepping stone to an imagined future. We’re consumed by what’s next, blind to the irreplaceable value of now. As each moment slips away, our finite supply grows smaller, and still, we willingly trade them for the pursuit of distant, uncertain goals.
Our culture glorifies chasing the future — achieving goals, hitting milestones, or finding happiness "someday." But this fixation blinds us to the richness of the present, to the beauty of simply existing instead of endlessly striving toward a future that may never arrive.
It’s not entirely our fault. We live in a system that reduces everything — our time, our energy, our lives — to tools for tomorrow. The present is stripped of meaning, valued only for what it might produce. And the irony? Those who’ve “succeeded” most in this system often find themselves empty. They’ve mastered turning time into profit, but they’ve spent their lives treating the present as a means to an end. Happiness, forever over the next horizon, remains just out of reach.
What if we chose a different path? What if, instead of obsessing over what’s next, we embraced the here and now? What if we savored each hug, each laugh, each sunrise as if it were the last? The moments we dismiss as ordinary are, in truth, the essence of life itself.
As the Russian philosopher Alexander Herzen once said: "Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up, but a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late.”
Much like that child, our purpose isn’t to achieve this or that in some uncertain future — it’s to embrace life as it unfolds in front of us.
Life is short, and the future is never guaranteed. The only certainty you have is the moment you’re in right now. To treat every moment with the reverence it deserves — not as a stepping stone, but as life itself — is to truly live. Every moment is irreplaceable.
281. how do we create our Self?
How do we create our Self?
Most of us think there isn’t much we can control about our Self. We’ve been conditioned to think we come into this world with a series of preset instructions on how to be. Whatever genetics we were born with or circumstances we were born into is pretty much a blueprint for our path forward in life, with many things out of our control. We say, “this is just how I am,” but is it really?
The long held idea of genetic determinism; the concept that whatever genetics we popped out with, we’re stuck with because we can’t change, grow, or evolve from, is what keeps us stuck. It’s a pervasive thought that has taken over the way we view our Self. Inevitably leading us to believe we can’t create our Self, because it’s already been created for us.
Fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn on these long held beliefs of a fixed Self. While genetics play a part, they are not the determining factor for the life we lead. As Dr. Terry Walhs puts it; “The genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.” While we are born with a certain set of genetics and into certain cultural belief systems, it’s largely a choice to see any of them as a limitation. We can choose to put our Self into a healthier environment (proper nutrition, exercise, etc.) to change our familial susceptibility to something like heart disease, just as we can choose to put our Self into a different mindset that will allow us to see possibilities outside of what is familiar to us.
The things we do, and the choices we make, determine how we show up in this world. Coming to the understanding that the life we were born into isn’t set in stone, and that any limitations are largely self-imposed, opens us up to have new conversations about creating a Self we want. Entertaining new possibilities that would have otherwise been unrecognizable with our previously fixed mindset.
So how can we create our Self? Forget the old ideals of predeterminism. Understand that the life we lead is a choice that only we have the power to make. We can choose to believe what we’re born with is all we’re capable of, or just a starting point to where we want to go. Creating our Self starts with creating our future. To do that, we have to begin to make choices based on where we want to go instead of where we came from. And with each choice, we create a piece of our new Self.
259. programmed
All our problems start in childhood. And it’s not just the fault of our parents, it’s also the things that happened at school and with our peers. Anything that happened before that transitionary age of 18, pretty much cemented the way we’ve thought and acted ever since.
The trauma we made it through isn’t who we are, but it did program us to see and approach the world in a certain way. Until we realize that there is a difference between what happened and what we understood it to be, we will be stuck viewing our future through the lens of the past. It can keep us from taking necessary risks, standing up for ourselves, asking for the things we deserve, and working hard to get the things we want.
Being stuck in the past is what stops our growth, and keeps us from the life we keep saying we want to have. At a certain point, we all need to realize it’s no longer good enough to look in the mirror and simply think “this is who I am.” We all need to be willing to break the mirror to see what’s on the other side, and redefine our lives from where we are today.
222. what’s past is prologue
You get to be the narrator of your life’s story. There’s no rule that says you must be defined by your past. It doesn’t matter who you were, in only matters who you want to become. Don’t fall into the trap of using your past as an excuse that keeps you stuck in habits, attitudes, relationships, and situations that prevent you from growing. Take responsibility for the life you have. If it’s not what you want, then change the way you relate to your story. Base your identity and internal narrative on your future, not your past.
what comes out is what’s on the inside
Your reaction to anything is the most powerful thing you can control, because it will influence all future events in your life. As Viktor Frankl, a man who survived the worst of the Nazi prison camps, said, “it is the last of the human freedoms to be able to choose how we act in any given situation.” Whatever happens to you, you have the ability to choose how you respond.
Whether you get fired, dumped, lose something, or get cut off in traffic, it’s important to remember that all these events are distinct They often pass as quickly as they happen. The problem is we often can’t let go of the feeling they created. We choose to hold on.
You never die from a snake bite. It happened. You die from the venom. The lasting impact of the event that created it. If you cut yourself, the natural process of the body is to heal. It doesn’t remain open as it would be subject to greater complications. When something happens to us, it is the choice, the holding on to the pain the event caused, not the event itself.
Holding on to the pain we’ve experienced can only manifest in negative emotions. Those negative emotions do not let our “wounds” heal. Instead, they create larger problems by influencing our future decisions. Pretty soon you start to think that it’s not you, but it’s other people, or things that happen to you, that re causing you to feel those negative emotions, but those outside events can’t create those internal feelings. Those feelings come from within. We’ve chosen to react in a certain way, by holding on to the pain we’ve been caused.
What comes out of you is what’s inside of you. Ask yourself the following question — if you squeeze an Orange, what comes out? It’s not a trick question. The only acceptable answer is Orange Juice.
Extend that metaphor to when someone “squeezes” you. Someone says something you don’t like, behaves towards you in a way you find offensive, does or says something that you perceive as hurtful, and out comes anger, bitterness, callousness, fear, hatred, resentment, stress, anxiety, or tension. Immediately, you say that you’re feeling this way because of how someone else acted toward you, or what someone else said, or did, but in reality — what comes out is what’s on the inside.
If we have chosen to hold on to the pain of our past, it will always be there to remind you the next time something similar happens. We have to make a conscious choice to respond to the challenging events in our life in a way that will allow us to heal and be open to the future we wish to have. Don’t let yesterday, take up too much today, because that’s how we build tomorrow.