What Changed My Life

Future fulfillment doesn’t exist.  Future un-fulfillment doesn’t exist.

“If you want a breeze in your house, you have to open a window.  However, just because you open the window doesn’t mean the breeze will come. You can’t make the breeze come in your window.  You just allow it—but it may or may never come.”-Dr. Marty Heitz

Do you enjoy life?	I think.
Is this a hard question to answer?	Yes, because sometimes life doesn’t make sense, and it can suck.
Are you sick of these questions?	Yes. It feels “try-hard”.  Looks like you just learned how to make a table in a Computer Proficiency class…
Well, hold on, I’ve got one more…	Okay, but I’m already bored with this blog….
What do you hate doing?	Oh.  I hate going to work. I hate going to school. I hate being a mom at times. I hate being a husband at times. I hate cooking.  I hate chores. I hate working out. I hate ______.

The biggest lie the world ever told: “Your future matters.”  The fact is, the future and the past are chains.  For the sake of this blog, let’s call those chains “anxiety.”  Sounds fair enough?  See that line?

That's your past and your future. 

See this line? That's you. 

Well, don’t you just look stunning!  Trying that new Oreo and rice diet I’ve been talking about… I can tell.  Bad joke? Don’t answer that one. Let’s see something... Now see where you are in the line of past and future? Right in the middle.

That's called the present. 

The present is you here and now.  It is the only time where you can exist.  Still following?  You can’t exist in the past or future.  You’ll only ever be in the present.  And yet, what attention do we give the present?  Almost none.

We take pictures to relive the past.  We post those pictures so others can see our past.  We value ourselves on how people look at our past.  We rate others on their pasts.  We spend around 210 minutes a week looking at pasts. Meanwhile, the present is still a perfectly wrapped gift.  And that’s just one distraction.

So what’ the real issue? Social media? I would definitely say it doesn’t help, but I’m not here arguing our society’s addiction to social media or the time spent of a phone (I’m guilty of that, too!) 

The real issue is recognizing: YOU ONLY EXIST (ON EARTH) NOW.

You don’t like your third hour class. You’re tired. You don’t care about how to write a synthesis essay.  You’re looking at your watch. You’re looking out the window.  You’re making a whale out of your gum and telling your classmate next you it’s not gum, "it’s mint scented silly putty."  You think this is waste of time.  And you know what?  You just made it that.  It has now become a waste of time.  You have stopped fighting and given into the lie that where you are isn’t where you should be.  That’s a very dangerous mentality.  It causes two things: a false sense of anxiety and disappointment. 

Why is it false?  Because it doesn’t actually exist, but we let it bother our minds like it does.  You’re anxious to get out of a situation you ultimately can’t: the present.  You’re anxious about your future and what you would be doing and what you could be doing and what you should be doing. But the reality is: the future doesn’t exist. The past doesn’t exist.  Now does.  Something could have existed at one point in the past.  Something could happen at one point in the future.  But they are all nonexistent now.  What is happening in the moment right NOW! and NOW! and NOW! Now is the only thing that exists. That’s why it’s a false sense of anxiety and disappointment.  There’s really no such thing as future disappointment or satisfaction, because the past and the future doesn’t exist. Only the present is real.

That’s a humbling thing to be told.  It really challenges you to think more about how you spend your time.  Right?  I mean you have this moment right now.  You’ve heard it before, “tomorrow is not promised.”   What are you going to do with it?

Now, lets look at disappointment.  We are a culture that gets very disappointed easily (and sometimes this can result in depression).  Our western paradigm says: think about how we can improve and get better.  Not only do we stress what’s going to happen in the non-existent future, but we always want it to get better and better and better and… yep, better.  “The future has to give us more than what we have now.  That’s the whole point of the future.” 

When does life actually go the way we want it to?

That’s a stupid thing to think. The future doesn’t even have to exist.  The future is under God's domain.  The future doesn’t have to do anything we want it to.  And when does it ever actually go the way we want it to?  Never.  Think about where you are right now.  Are you actually where you thought you’d be?  Are things actually better?  I’m not saying your crazy hard struggle right now won’t eventually go away.  You can pray and have hope that it does—and it might!  But let’s exhaust all options.  At best, your problem will go away temporarily and then what?  Yep, another struggle emerges.  Future satisfaction does not exist.  At worst, your problem never goes away and then what?  You’re miserable the rest of your life? No.  If future satisfaction doesn’t exist, then neither does future disappointment.  The future isn’t real, yet.  But now is.  How will you act now?  With a struggle and without a struggle?  That’s the ultimate mentality we should be striving to have.  No matter what happened in past, or what happens the future (whether good or bad) we are to hold a joy that doesn’t waiver. 

My friend said, “I don’t want to go through a hard time in life and look back and think I lived that entire period of my life with an angry and depressed attitude.  I would be miserable for that part of my life, and no matter how hard that struggle was, it’s not worth taking away that precious time.”

I agree.  Your attitude in the present is critical. Do you want to waste your time angry and bitter?  If you know my story, you know I’ve experienced some pain.  I will probably experience more in the future.  But both my past and present don’t exist.  My now does.  What my friend said is true.  I want to live joyous and content (never complacent) in my life right now.  I want to be grounded in something far greater than me.  But here’s the trick!   Let’s say I didn’t do a good job, and I did get bitter or angry, the same mentality would say:  I won’t look back and get upset I handled it that way.  That’s just a cycle.  It’s the past.  I will move on. I will ask those I’ve hurt for forgiveness. And I won’t focus on the future.  But I will live right now. 

Do you want to waste time being bitter and angry? 

I do believing in dreaming big. I’m a dreamer.  What matters is where I put my value.  What I’m attached to.

Attachment is composed of two things: identification and investment. 

In Asian philosophy we’ve been studying this concept in depth.  My professor brought up a thought experiment that caught me off guard and changed my life.

He brought up the idea of a voodoo doll.  He said the basic practice is to put a piece of hair or clothing of a person on a doll that represented that person.  The goal is to hurt the person by hurting the doll.  They would feel pain in the exact areas the doll was poked with a needle. 

I’m not going to go into the voodoo practice, but my professor mentioned how today our attachments can have the same effect on us as a voodoo doll being poked. 

Let me explain.

Imagine the thing you’re attached to the most (car, style, talents, phone, house, job).  Now imagine those things getting damaged.  Your car being keyed.

How do you feel?  You’re hurt, right?  You’re mad.  You’re sad. You’re offended.  But the person didn’t key you. The person didn’t damage you.  So why are you hurt?  Like a voodoo doll, the damage wasn’t done directly to you, but to an object physically separate from you.

“But Chloé, you don’t understand.  That car wasn’t just a car.  I paid for it with my own money.  I drove across country in it. I worked hard for it.  It’s more than just a car.  There are so many memories in it.  It was my first car.  It was my last car. It was the car I was going to give to….”

Attachment.

So how does all this fit together?  When you are attached to something that doesn’t exist (in other words: you find your identity and you invest in the past and/or the future that do not exist) you will never really be satisfied.  You’ll be anxious about something that has already happened, or something that hasn’t happened.  And that is a distraction.  A distraction from the present.  Be faithful where you are.  It’s a loaded statement.  It takes a lot of unraveling and searching. We’re human. I know I’m attached to things that distract me.  However, the realization of this attachment is the first step. I can catch myself and ask for accountability.  Now “be slow to anger” is a lot more attainable.  I can’t be disappointed in life, because being disappointed in my life is like being disappointed in what you can’t change—foolish.  If you’re disappointed in where you are, check what you’re attached to.  Jesus broke the chains for all of us.  The freedom from anxiety and disappointment He called, “the kingdom of heaven.”  Which, we all have access through Him.  He’s the only thing I want to be attached to.  And since He is love, that’s pretty crazy to think about.  We’re not attached to a God who loves (action) but who is actually love (being).   And that can never lead a disappointing life—sad, hard, painful, beautiful, messy, awesome, crazy—but never disappointing.

Never.
Disappointing.