The Future is Now

I saw a great quote the other day from Howard Zinn, an historian probably best known to the general public as the guy who wrote the book that Matt Damon quotes in Good Will Hunting. It’s a shame, though, because the man really was an amazing writer. An amazing thinker, really. I won’t regurgitate the entire quote here, but the relevant part is this, “The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

So many of us, myself included, spend vast portions of our lives looking towards something grand. The little things, good and bad, are quickly forgotten if not overlooked entirely. It’s much more fun to think about how things could be, not only for us, but for the world around us. Actually working towards those goals isn’t nearly as enjoyable. What we fail to perceive is that time is moving forward whether we’re living in the present or dreaming of the future.

I think that some of the frustration that people feel in their day to day lives is that it doesn’t always seem as though we can make a difference. The truth is, everything we do makes a difference, not only for ourselves, but for the people in our lives. We don’t have to wait for our lives to be perfect in order to act, we just need to act. We also don’t need the world to cooperate, because if we wait for that, we’ll be waiting for most of our lives.

I recently had a discussion on the nature of happiness with a friend of mine. (As you know, this would be a topic that I can write and talk about extensively) I argued that everyone has something that brings happiness into their lives, but the trick is to both be able to figure out what that thing is, and also to work towards practicing that action. We all have things that bring us temporary joy, or stave off unhappiness. For me, there would be plenty of those: poker, cooking, writing this blog or writing in general, reading, listening to music, playing with the cats, etc. But the one thing that brings me truly transcendent happiness is pleasing others. Bringing joy into someone else’s life, actually making a difference in how they perceive their day, that is the drug that fuels my happiness addiction.

I think I had lost track of a fundamental truth that the Zinn quote allowed me to see clearly again. It doesn’t take a grand gesture, and I don’t need to wait for everything to align in order to make my present better. In honor of this I decided to pursue a series of small gestures. I bought a stack of funny greeting cards, and hand wrote a letter on the inside of each one, and started sending them out to friends. The effect was immediate, and I was able to brighten the day of many of my friends. It wasn’t anything spectacular, just a small gesture to let them know that I cared, and that I appreciated the fact that they were in my life.

We cannot lose sight of the small things, because they are the bulk of our existence. The things that you will remember for the rest of your life, those experiences only happen once in a great while. Yes, they are the things that define the path of your life. But the person that you become in between those events will be defined by the ordinary events that happen on every random day for the five or ten years between earth shattering events. If you ignore them, or overlook them, or take them for granted, you are missing out on most of your life.

Today is the tomorrow you dreamed of yesterday. Live the dream every day.