Now Can be Better Than EverI am in fact waiting on something that I already have, these good qualities I already have in abundance are the very qualities I' waiting for or procrastinating on and I am involved in a contradiction of my own making. The positive side to this is your trying to earn a pass when you already have a free pass. I already have a ticket to ride and I spend all my time waiting on line for a ticket. I might be working so hard for something when I already have a free pass. What I did in that situation is I injected more volatility into the the possible scenarios. Because one outcome was put in the highest priority, the weight of the situation became greater and seemed more volatile to me. I then pushed the lever of procrastination so the situation would seem to weight less to me. The cost wasn’t as high because I will delay. Or it could be anything I think is going to make me worthy. If I first do this, I am good or I am worthy, and then I can allow myself to be present to the now. By thinking in this fashion, we are putting the whatever it is that I think will make me worthy not only first but as a must. Again, I am putting more than just being my first choice, it is a first and only route to the now and therefore makes the weight of what I am putting first as more than a preference I might choose and maybe more of an actual hurdle than I needed to make it. In actuality, there is no second choice, because if I don’t make it to my first choice, I am not worthy for any other choices. If I don’t bring my first choice into the now, then there will be no other choices of significance coming into the now. There is no revisionist thinking here and no rudder that I can adjust. Of course, some of the basic contingencies should be there but the list can become onerous and dictatorial to my interests. I give up the now because one or several things I say have to be in place before I do anything just aren’t in place so I give up on everything because my contingencies just aren’t met. The demands I make aren’t met so no deal is cut. I can’t set my sails unless I first have an easterly breeze of at least 15 knots. This demand might limit my willingness or ability to experience the now. Then I can consider whether these demands are set up as the excuse. I set up this set of demands, as an excuse not to get going now. I’ll golf I say when I can first shoot below an 80. How am I going to get my score below an 80 from where I am now which is in the 90’s without continuing to play the game? What happens then is that I don’t go golfing. I set up an actual catch 22 about my golfing game because I can’t get the necessary improvement without additional game practice. One-way to get into the present is to lower or lessen my demands at times so at the least I can continue on. I can operate on the highest levels yes, but also I can operate on lower levels in terms of my higher golf scores. I can accept different levels of performance. I don’t have to have full thrust on my every effort every time out. We might continue to squander the present not by overdoing and extravagance, but by the opposite, just putting a discount on the now, which we estimate isn’t worth as much as the future, and we push it away for those golden days ahead, for another day, month, year, or decade. If now was a person, you would probably show him or her out of the way and say I’ve got to follow the gold rush so go get out of my way. I’m on my way out to find gold. When I look at the gardens of the now, I need maybe even to first see if I have my own permission to do this. Convergence or divergence often is a matter of permission. If you diverge, you may not have had that secret permission to branch away. But sometimes divergence is smart. But then maybe you are not permitted to converge either. I will consider neither the convergent nor the divergent view. So either way I can’t lose. However, due consideration was never made, that court was never held, I got the escape hatch and closed it behind me. Procrastination often just an unwillingness to sift through the remaining arguments pro and con and finally bring whatever weight you choose to assign to each of the arguments to the table. I might indeed be waiting for all the variables to be in place. The law student expects that once the variable that’s in place of the law degree he will be able to impress members of the opposite sex. But in fact in may be another variable that will appeal the most to a given girl. He might have all the variables in place for a given girl now absent the law degree. He doesn’t need the law degree for this girl because that’s not what matters to this girl. Her now variable is something else she wants which is an athletic person. Her wish list is different from what you assumed it was. Realizing also, that everybody has a slightly different wish list for anything. The variable or trait that might most appeal to any given women might be a certain look. Or a certain interest such as in athletics or international events that varies with an individual, which he himself may or may not already have now. And then he might get the variable in place that he thinks is most important only later to find that something else was most important to a given women and he already had that variable back then. Or he finds that he gets the variable of the law degree and it doesn’t matter to this girl now because is was some other variable that she wanted that he hasn’t got now. The idea is that we have to review not only for which are the variables we think we need later, but what are the variables that are already in place now that relate to what I am trying to do. Also, consider which variables are most important to a negotiation or situation now and whether these variables are being looked at in their proper proportion and weights especially when we are dealing with other people or outside forces where they might weigh or consider those variables in a different fashion then we might have assumed. What carries weight with one person may not be what carries weight in that degree with another person. People do weigh things differently. What is going to matter most in a given situation I can’t always be sure of. While we are looking for additional variables, also look for variables that we already have that we can capitalize on and capture right now. When someone starts to drive, they are given a learners permit. They are given permission to drive with a fellow licensed driver, as a learner’s permission. I will never get to drive, which is a common mode of transportation, if there has been no permission granted. Of course we want our permission to have some future resonance that gets me a proper reward. For example, I am a doctor and I’m working on cloning which society is apparently not willing to accept in the foreseen future, I may want to find a path that is more allowable and permissive in terms of it’s fruitions in the near future, so maybe I should seek another scientific project that could be rewarding. Or maybe you had one bad experience, you gave a lousy speech, so you removed permission from yourself ever to be a public speaker, that possible relationship with the future audience was severed forever to protect yourself from a similar experience. I do this while pondering other protective mechanisms I have formed that keep me from investigating anything from the present that I could have tried to expand with. On the other hand, you get divorced, and you then take away permission to get into that realm of relating again, even though future opportunities sometimes appear again in the now. You had a bad hamburger at McDonald’s. You tell yourself, I’ll never go there again. Permission is granted you have permission not to go. And maybe that’s good. But permission can work both ways. Why not give yourself permission to go either way in the future, to be or not to be, as Shakespeare said. I will never go to McDonald’s I said, I have my own permission or I could change my mind, after reviewing updated facts on the food, I might find the particular McDonald’s may not be representative of them all, the particular hamburger I had is not representative of every hamburger I could still have. So I can choose again, depending, along with the issuance of new information, on that which I can permit myself to consider, either sometime now or sometime later, in changing my mind. One experience is not every experience and I can maybe get on that horse of going to McDonald's again, despite my one fall. Or maybe it is true, one experience is every experience. But I might not get you to believe that either. We seem to give permission to ourselves to expect the dismal and the abysmal. I hear the bad news and I permit myself to believe it. Why not give ourselves permission to accept or even begin to see that something good might yet happen, however improbable, and least put some percentage chance on the good. A low chance in not the same as no chance. There might be a 10 or 20 percent or some percentage chance it would come your way. We seem to give ourselves permission to constantly turn the channel on TV, but in so many other ways we are locked forever, our thoughts are set in everlasting stone, unalterable to any of the new, those prior patterns will prevail and the sails I already set go with me and course along with the same outline and with our prior beliefs intact, when in fact new patterns are forming and we need magnetic and magic thoughts and we can go where new ideas might be found. We haven’t given ourselves permission to have new, different, and more determined ways of thinking. Putting it simply can I think about something else or determine that I can think about something else? This view, which digresses from the known and familiar, is in fact a view, which might be the one that somehow gets us humming. If you can find some good ideas, follow or trail along with the logic of those good ideas. I don’t have to search out only for what I believe is the best view I can get. If I don’t find the best view, I don’t have to say I want no view, I can look at the views that are in between or outside the familiar circle. There is something lacking but I can’t pinpoint it. Can I find that something else. I might be trying to pinpoint, allocate, and find a precision point and on top of that put it on a time line. In doing this, I might be missing out real present time options and chances. Part of the cause of this is the mathematic part of the education process, which gives equations, and formulas that can be followed forward to a precise answer. But the situations I might be involved with or hope to be involved with might not operate in a similar fashion. Indeed I might not be able to pinpoint when, where and how, and by looking to do this I might further aggravate my search process and might get myself involved in even more procrastination. I can contemplate weather a neat approach should be taking or whether I might just as well abandon the search for a neat, ordered process and just go forward without it. Even if I do find at the moment a neat, ordered process, I can still be aware that this might be interrupted by outer events of a more global nature. Some people continually look for dating partners while having preset criteria. I will only permit myself to talk with someone, of a certain height. Or the rich man thinks he should only talk wealthy counterparts, foregoing conversations with the plebian masses. But the variables and intersections, can not be completely known in advance, territories are not in fact neatly defined or static, they might be more like a gushing river. I find no matter how much I have going for me, I am subject to operating in the same chaos as anyone else. These territories, may not even remain in their current form, each moment really is newly forming territory, even very separate from the past. Just because this girl isn’t a model doesn’t mean she isn’t attractive, so we can’t always look for a true dichotomy, a true split. All diamonds aren’t the same. So I procrastinate because I don’t know, how things will converge together, so I forget about it all together, foregoing the now, the coming together never happens, so we will never know what might have been. Had we been willing to take in another view. The coming together of ideas, of people, of what could yet be is passed over. In part due to the dim perceptions of some if not all of us now. Two people both have the variable of liking each other, but they never follow through towards a friendship. It might be better to make one or two of our coinciding variables definite and let the rest be moving or changeable variables. If I make too many of my coinciding variables definite, it could leave me out of now. I could make only say one variable definite. I definitely want at least x amount of money with me as I travel through Europe as these two needed and wanted variables work together. But do I also want the political conditions to be definite, the weather patterns to be definite in the various countries I intend to travel? I want to date someone with blue eyes. I could make this variable definite but leave some of the other variables open. Then, how many coinciding variables do I want to get going as I attempt to march them together. What variables are really most important here as far as having side by side implications? I could appreciate say reading a book I enjoy the show as much as anyone, even the King. I might have an intrinsic feeling and thought that reaches towards the highest levels. So although I may seem to be less perfect than the next person, my level of appreciation shows good capacities. That ability to appreciate in and of itself can reach new and great heights. My facility to engage to a great lecture, a great movie, and a good course of dialogue, might be as high for me as the person who seems to have so much more on the surface of things or I am indeed at a close level to perfection in terms of my appreciations. The ability to appreciate is another type of vision and sight that I can begin to rely upon or refer to now. The appreciation I am finding within is a form of sight for me now. In addition, think about the word vote that seems to give permission and says yes now. When you are talking at length with a friend, you are voting yes, yes I give my consent to this endeavor, yes it is worthwhile to some degree. A girl says she will go with you to the movie, that right there is a yes vote, you might as well run for office. The reverse can take place the regular guy gets some interest from the supermodel. Like in the movie Notting Hill. Julia Roberts in the end, playing herself really, finds her happiness in the character played by Hugh Grant, the man minding the bookstore in Notting Hill. Find your Notting Hill. The rich and famous might want the regular. The guy dismisses the supermodel as not being interested in him, foregoing a now opportunity, not even giving her a chance to consider things from her side of the table. So the dismissive statement, she’s out of my league, leaves her view out of the equation and doesn’t permit further review and consideration. The easy no prevails, rather than the more risky maybe that leaves some consideration on both sides of the table. But I didn’t have my own permission anyway I couldn’t allow myself to date a rich, supermodel. All this portrays how there are many views to consider, not just your own that can affect things now. It’s almost like we are waiting for someone to give us permission to get going now. I didn’t pass somebody’s test on this, so where is the permission? With the procrastination, I have for the time being withdrawn permission and I need to obtain that permission back. Part of this is we are so used to taking tests that we think we need to take and pass a test to have permission to do things now. Tests are seen as permission that gave the floor to walk on. After school, we feel we still need to take a test and pass it before we can move on to another course. It could be a moral test, a goodness test, a competence test, a know how test, an aptitude test or any other test we feel we need to pass to validate our entree into the now. So why don’t I just give you a test, if you pass the test, you’ll feel better and you will feel like you can proceed and go ahead now. Permission could be a way of having a looser hold on our goals. I will pursue my goal, but I will permit the unknown variables to operate in that I can only monitor them at best and I cannot affect them at all times in ways that I can know or find out about. I will charter the unknown and unsheltered course, and brave the elements going across the plains to the West without knowing what fully is out there in the West. I feel good about golf when I play, but I feel vaguely guilty about going to the golf course, because I don’t have a six-figure income, or seven-figure income yet. There are no absolute requirements as to what I need to have to enjoy myself. I need to shelter my time towards this one goal. When I get the dough, I can relax and go to the course and enjoy the game of golf. But when I check reality firmly, I find I can go to the golf course now and enjoy it now because I am good at the game now. I talk well with various golf partners now, and I can do this now, without keeping and preserving that artificial barrier I have superimposed upon my seaway of time, where I had segmented myself away from the game, foregoing what can be a respite and break for me now. I don’t need to sequester, I can walk the land with despite my pockets being relatively empty, basking in the sunshine of the now, because I can do this now. All I need now is the shirt on my back and I do have that shirt. And maybe you would get the next idea that would propel you to the higher income on the golf course, lightning strikes on the golf course as well and you can listen for the thunder there. You can fight your wars on the golf course. Wherever you can have a chance. You can commune with all of your interests under the open sky, strategizing on the move. Not knowing all the variables or what will actually beckon and when, I might try to control my outer environment, I fight to find the variables, I try to reduce my landscape and horizons to the controlling process, as I try to deny on some ends to control for the wanted variables on other ends. Where and how the variables will pop in and pop out I just don’t know. The control factor itself may be off. Can I control for the weather by mowing my lawn. Those factors may have no relationship. Can I control for world peace by giving my full attention to the news? Can I control for a higher grade by only studying more where only issues might sometimes come in. I might have to relinquish some control to the forces of chance to further find myself in the present. Maybe the variable that most applies in a particular case is finding an instructor with a more liberal grading policy. I go to a social event, what are the variables I need to control to have a good time? What are the variables making up the blend? Indeed those valued variables might be out of reach on all fronts, but do we know this now? So we look around and begin to give ourselves a more permissive landscape, not letting go of the script but start to ad lib a bit on it, realizing the script we having given to ourselves might be sanctimonious with stratospheric flying above the sanctimonious waters that I wanted to trough. So we can modify, abate, brushing aside or even scraping our highly charged script or have it flow to a lighter current. At least I started with some script. But I can work a revised script off any previous script. Then bonding again with the now in other ways, and giving permission to ourselves as if we could ever capture some of the now, and finally experiencing it as it is, bordering on new heights and other measures of greatness, or at least coming and running closer to the real in the now. And those variables can come at us with highly charged expectations, with a greater intensity that we had previously thought, so we don’t even know the force of the intersections and how strong each of the variables will be. There might be collisions of unknown proportions. When someone is running with the football, it assumed they will finally get tackled most of the time, absent of a touchdown, but it can be with a full charge of members from the other team, rather than just a trip up. The variable of the tackle can have varying degrees of intensity. Can the closeness bring us real focus, with some tightening of the lens, the anchor might yet hold. If the sighting of land is actually possible as it finally was for Columbus, indeed we may be just on the border of finally getting there, because we never gave up on what we really wanted, and recognized it finally in the now, and finally did not brush away the paintings of our desire, with the water drops of the fierce rains. Am I in the right location now? I am in the right state, the right country, the right century? Am I reading the right book now? Am I thinking the right thoughts now? I don’t know for sure. What happens is I fill in that void of not knowing with something negative as a proxy for decision-making material? However, I am using material that doesn’t have the proper substance to the situation. I really just don’t know and I shouldn’t fill that void in with presumed negativity. Those wide gaps in knowing that we are all subject to should be left open rather than filled with the negative. Don’t try and close the gap of not knowing with negativity, just say don’t know. Most of us do need a coach or somehow find a coach to help us recognize what could become now. So close in the now, yet still so far away. To actualize on something, we may have to get a bit closer to it. You can’t shake a persons hand a million miles away. You can’t see a person with the naked eye a thousand miles away, unless you have Superman’s astounding eyesight. Just like you can’t see 1000 miles away, you can’t see 1000 days ahead. Neither sight affords you a view you just aren’t close enough. Of course, you don’t necessarily want the absolute closest view of the cliff either. You can get close to the now of reading a book if you actually open it, and turn your eyes from the TV or the ocean or anything else and actually look at a page. You can get closer the now of being at the game, if you get on the line for the ticket and stop circling the stadium. You can get closer to the pitchers mound, it you work on your curveball. You can get closer to the now of hitting a jump shot, if you actually pick up a basketball and shoot it at the hoop. You might get closer to knowing another person in you have an actual conversation with them, taking that previously forbidden path. You can get closer to the sunrise of today, if you don’t let yourself sleep through that early alarm, and stop dreaming of the next century. Well then, when is the waiting going to be over? When is the party going to begin? When can I start, when can you start. Patience is good but we can wait forever. I might be on a patient progression that will land me at the door of success in 2050. In the meantime, all sorts of doors closed behind me. I could have been progressing on several fronts at the same time and maybe one or some of them might have found a landing point in some present time. If we really want something, we can help ourselves out of the waiting mode at times, and this can help bring us to the now. Help yourself to a cookie now. I might be waiting for the next eclipse of the sun, the next appearance of the ice age, the reappearance of the dinosaurs, my next tour of space, but in the meantime, I could have seen the movie. Again, what I am going to do with the open spaces in between all those great events. I can do other things while I am waiting. We may be so used to waiting for our ship, that when it finally appears, I can’t make the move to get on it. The Nina, Pinto, and Santa Maria finally show up, but hey it’s 1992 not 1492 and it’s just too late. I was so set in my ways, that I was actually patiently frozen in my tracks, my tracks of disappointment, my tracks of unmet expectations, my tracks of lost vision and hope. In the meantime, I was waiting for that ship, I said no, not now, my ship is coming, while a limousine was coming to pick me up to take me to the private jet. Yeah, I walked away from the biggest storm, but I missed everything else that great sea offered me, from those who welcomed me right up front, from the appearances of those who were on the upcoming horizon for me, from them I turned away. I might have waited out the winter but somehow all the seasons passed me by, I never saw the blooming of the seasons. I was looking for an exact season when other seasons where there for me. As I wasted away on a winter’s landscape, never even seeing the patches of the possible I totally closed my eyes, waiting words to wasting worlds. Spring I never met I never met her now she would have liked me. I just went to a friend’s birthday party he was at the decade mark, which we celebrated. We all left, the host said he would have a party in 10 years, for the next decade mark, we would meet together in 2011. Humorous yes, it was not a joke, just a representation of the truth, those ten years between would be the forgotten grains in the woodwork, so much a part of what is a landscape for scant gatherings of the brotherhood. So let’s not do it now, but make it ten years, let’s wait a year, why not 10, why not 20. I’ll trade for Mike Piazza in 2012. Let’s make a deal. The golden boy will still be golden, right? What is the rush? But how do we know that the variables, the intersections, the open doorways, might also be as unknown then as they are now. If I am dealing with unknowns now, why will everything be so certain later on? One thing is certain, uncertain conditions will prevail and the elements I am dealing with carry with them uncertainty in the far future. We may never get the script we first wanted, not now, or not later, so lets see what we can do with the now, allowing for secondary scripts to form. Acting on some parts of another script, actually catching some of today’s waves, while hoping for the good surf of tomorrow, remembering no matter what our good fortune and recompense may be tomorrow, I can’t reach my hand back into today, finding what I gave up for tomorrow. Lot ’s of good opportunities can be found on secondary paths . This opportunity in this day will be gone forever for everybody, not just me. Another chance will come around that hill, over that bend, but this glance is over. I might have given up this forever. We might still be able to keep an open mind towards the future, but also keep one of those open eyes on your present, even if you wear the pirates eye patch. One thing is certain and that is as I travel down this coast time is traveling with me Also don’t expect to be able to say, I’ll be more sure of this in the land of tomorrow, when we aren’t even sure footed about the path we do see. I can see now, I can hear now, and yet this road I’m on now is still uncertain.. My very next step might be in quicksand or put me over the cliff, which would you prefer. 20 percent certainty isn’t going to convert to 90 percent certainty even if there are better conditions tomorrow. I might be waiting for a conversion I am not going to get. Is this particular variable going to convert itself into a more known quantity? I have a 50 percent chance of getting a reliable weather prediction two days in advance, is this going to convert to 90 percent in the near future? So knowing the uncertainty factor will substantially remain with us going into that future, we don’t have to wait for certainty to do something now, because that certainty we want is never coming our way even though we might deserve it, or at least in the percentages we want, to the degree we want. It is just as likely percentage wise that the uncertainty for us will increase into the future, as it would likely decrease. We categorically know the uncertainty remains, because the variables we are dealing with have uncertainty attached to them. If want to swim, I’ll have to go into the sea. If I could somehow be certain as to what the current will be and what each wave is like, and even then, other variables could impinge against the certainty I have obtained currently. The shark might like this surf as well, representing the third variable, and come and join you for a swim. And you thought you didn’t have any friends. Often, not now, not later, not before, not after, will I ever know the whole truth of what happened, what could have happened for I’m not going to find out later what really went wrong now. I’ll never know for sure what might have been on that road not taken it might have been great but the road just wasn’t taken so I didn’t get to see. If some of the elements are agreeable now , maybe we can take a chance, give it a go. If I can’t find all, maybe I can find some. Maybe at least the water is warm and friendly that way. Take those welcoming waters and put that surfboard to work. Listen to the tunes of the Beach Boys once more. Some tunes are still left against those lost and forgotten days against the landscape of what was once possible. So maybe I find I can still hit a home run , I can still run the bases. It doesn’t get better than this, one more wave, just for me. The waves say yes, permission is granted, ride those seas to heights once more. Another reason to involve yourself now, to do it now, it to find out what you have going for you earlier, what your assets are, start to ring up that cash register early. There are high school, and grade school kids that could write a great novel right now but they are supposed to properly qualified to do this. You see some are child actors and already capitalizing on acting ability, which is currently present. To pick up a baseball bat at 40 and hit the ball 600 feet is something that you might have wanted to find out about earlier given the baseball contracts. You have your first slice of pizza at 99 and you like it. There have been pizza stores all over the place for the last 100 years, and you could have pursued this all along. But pizza has been absent from my life all this time and I could have been enjoying this many times over. So there is an argument for a least looking into or delving into something enough to where we can find out what the story is earlier rather than later. I can think about what I feel is absent from my life that I could have incorporated previously and taken with me as I went along . Try the different things now and see it you can take it and keep it going all the way along the coast. I can also say if I can find out earlier that I don’t like this, I would let go of the idea earlier, and create space that is more open now for something else. So exploration can be a valid reason for doing something now, even if you want to read in a different or unfamiliar genre, that is not going to give you direct financial gain, you could still justify the course by trying to find out now if you like say science fiction readings. So you can get into this interest throughout rather than at some further point down the road that is more of an endpoint. The testing process is something we agree to when we take many courses, which have this aspect. Why not allow ourselves to test our interests like we allow ourselves to be tested in a course, sooner rather than later and find out what we enjoy and would like to incorpo |