I have been thinking a lot lately about the idea of “living in the now.” It shows up everywhere. Mindfulness writing, spiritual spaces, productivity culture, even therapy language. The message is usually simple: the past is gone, the future does not exist, and peace lives only in the present moment.
There is truth in that. There is also a gap.
If taken too literally, living only in the present collapses under its own weight. You cannot measure progress. You cannot define success. You cannot build anything meaningful without some relationship to the future, or learn without some relationship to the past. A life lived entirely in the moment may feel calm, but it quickly becomes reactive.
The problem is not that we think about the past or the future. The problem is how we do it, and how often.
The past matters because it contains lessons. The future matters because it contains intention. Both become harmful only when they run unchecked. Memory turns into rumination. Planning turns into anxiety. At that point, thinking stops being useful and starts becoming noise.
What gets lost in a lot of mindfulness writing is agency. Presence is framed as the answer to everything, when in reality it is a tool. A powerful one, but still a tool.
Success, for example, cannot be measured without time. It requires reference points. Where you started. Where you are now. Where you intend to go. Without those, success becomes nothing more than a pleasant feeling in the moment, disconnected from effort or direction.
I do not want a life that is calm but unintentional. I want one that is deliberate, responsive, and grounded.
That means holding three things at once:
- using the past to learn, without reliving it
- using the future to aim, without obsessing over it
- using the present to act, without drifting
Presence helps with execution. It keeps attention where action happens. It allows you to notice what is actually going on, instead of what your mind keeps replaying or rehearsing. But presence alone does not decide what matters. Values do that. Goals do that. Responsibility does that.
A healthier way to think about this is not “live only in the now,” but “choose when to leave it.”
Plan deliberately. Reflect intentionally. Then return to the present to do the work.
When those modes blur together, life gets noisy. When they are separated with intention, things get clearer.
I find this especially relevant when rebuilding something. A blog. A career.
Trust in yourself.
You need vision to know what you are rebuilding toward. You need memory to know what worked and what didn’t. And you need presence to take the next step without being paralysed by either.
Peace does not come from erasing time. It comes from managing attention across it.
I am not interested in philosophies that promise peace by shrinking life down to a single moment. Life is bigger than that. Meaning lives across time. Growth does too.
The present moment is where life happens.
The future is where intention lives.
The past is where understanding comes from.
Ignoring any one of them leaves something important behind.
Photo by Alejandro Piñero Amerio on Unsplash
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