Present Tense Only

This morning I walked north on my walking path. The NPR station I was listening to told me it was 59 degrees, the sky was overcast, and the fallen leaves crunched under my feet. A scent of nuts and impending rain was in the air. Since it is Thanksgiving week in America, it is hard not to think early about the truly bountiful blessings of the harvest. Every day I need to remind myself to be grateful for retirement and for the privilege of being able to live in the moment.

I have become recently aware of this concept through a couple of incidents in my life. One occurred in a telephone conversation with my two-year-old grandson Cole. I asked him a question about a recent event with his godfathers. His mother quickly replied, "Cole has no concept of the past or present, only what is happening at this moment." I have also heard an acquaintance, Ann, speak several times of being asked by her husband Sonny to live in the moment with him. He was dying of lung cancer and would often ask her to put away the busyness of her life just to lie in the bed with him and enjoy the present.

I think we often spend far too much time thinking about both the past and the future. We tend to linger over the times we made an inappropriate comment, we intentionally caused a breach in a relationship, or we agonized over other actions. We also tend to think a lot about the future, whether or not we as retirees will have enough money to live well until death and, hopefully, be able to leave a little to our children and grandchildren.

I always like the Scripture that talks about not worrying about the future. It reminds us that sparrows do not, so we should not as well. Living in present tense is the important choice for us to make as we are thankful this week for our blessings: an intensely beautiful world which we are to care for, a family that loves us, and bountiful food to eat every day.