Living: The Past, Present and Future

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Many of us can get so caught up in living our lives by solely dwelling in the past or regularly planning and anticipating the future. Both are good but when taken to extremes can cause us to miss out the beautiful experiences, relationships or opportunities that life offers entirely. We can be bogged down with our past mistakes or success or plans in the future that we forget to simply live the present.



I am reminded of the value when I was on my swimming practice yesterday. On one of the training routines, I have to swim about 1 kilometer (about from XU to Gaisano Mall 3 times!). That's quite a long way and a tiring one, too, especially if you're not used to the pounding of the water. And this situation, this is exactly my case but I went on anyway.While I was doing the 1KM (1000meters) routine, I was having a fast pace with the thought that I need to finish it as quickly as possible. Swimming the laps was a hard thing but thinking about was very frustrating knowing that I only done 50 meters! Then these thoughts of inadequacy came rushing in my mind telling me reasons why I can't finish the routine. To make the long story short, I finished the first 500 meters with a lot of thoughts in my past (bad memories). Then I said to myself, " Why the heck am I thinking all of these things? I'm not here to think about my goal or my past but TO SWIM!" Funny but I guess I got bogged down by thinking about my goal and reasons why I can't accomplish that i completelt forgot I was swimming (lap after lap, after lap!) I'd probably be dead by now if I wasn't able to get back to reality. Thank God!

That may sound ludicrous but many of us are guilty of surrendering ourselves to the fantasy world of the future. We then tend to forget the present! Or some of us may dwell too much on the past , our family memories, the achievements or the bad experiences we had that we, again, forget about living. We then become close-minded on the future, to change and new ideas.

Basically, I'm not saying that we should live only for the sake of the present. People who adapt this lifestyle can be best descriebed by this hedonistic point of view:

" Let us drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die."

Many of us are guilty of living one of these three extreme cases. There should be striking balance on these three. And yes, it takes work. There is a time when we need to look in our past for lessons on mistakes or affirmation of our successes in carrying out the present challenges that will, in turn, be a foundation of our bright future. Our future is a vision on how we see ourselves and the world change towards betterment and completeness.

Indeed, to live the past, the present and the future should be placed in a proper perspective. Like any other worthwhile endeavor, it takes effort, passion and hard work. But at the end, we'll be able to live the holistic life that we'll consummate and give back to the One who gave it to us at the first place.