Living in the Present

In my office, I have a clock. The clock says “NOW” on it. The purpose of the NOW clock is to remind me that the only thing that matters is what I do in this moment—not the future, and not the past. I actually toyed with the idea of taking the minute and hour hands off the clock, leaving only the second hand, to drive the point home even further.

Living in the present is a good thing to do. Most people spend half their time projecting into the future, and half their time dwelling on the past, and absolutely zero time in the present moment. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t plan for the future—it’s good to make plans—but when people think about the future, they’re typically projecting, and 99% of all projections are negative. When people think about the future, they have anxiety, and they engage in catastrophic thinking. This terrible thing will happen, or that terrible thing will happen, I’m going to lose my job, my kid is going to get abducted, my house is going to get robbed—very few people look at the future with anticipation. It’s always dread.

Before we go any further, let me tell you that I do a terrible job of living in the present. I am either living in the wreckage of the past, or the wreckage of the future. This, in spite of the NOW clock. I find myself thinking of some awkward date I had in high school, spilling wine on someone’s shoe at a holiday party, or lamenting big losses I’ve had trading in my personal account. I have made a million mistakes in my life, and I’ve probably rehashed each of them a thousand times. Most of this involves broken relationships, things I could or should not have said, or things I could or should not have done. But you can’t unfuck them whores. What’s in the past, is past. The past is history, the future’s a mystery, and today is a gift, which is why they call it the present. Super corny, but true.

You know who is the best in the world at living in the present? Derek Jeter. Those who played with Jeter said that the guy had absolutely no memory—if he struck out, he would forget it immediately, and move on to the next plate appearance. If he made an error on the field, he didn’t dwell on it, and would concentrate on the next play. Derek Jeter had over 3,600 hits in his career, but notably, he never really had extended slumps. The vast majority of hitters, after having a few golden sombreros, will begin pressing at the plate, making the slump even worse. The failure of the last plate appearance led to the failure of the next plate appearance—they were serially correlated. Jeter had a fresh approach every time, which is why is considered to be one of the greatest players in history. But it’s not just baseball—talk to any professional athlete: basketball players, football players, and they will talk about the importance of moving on after a bad play and concentrating on the task at hand. Living in the present isn’t just about your mental health—it’s also about operating at peak performance.

I’ve done some things in my life that make me cringe in horror—I’ve talked about cringe memories in a previous essay. What is the purpose of your past? The purpose of your past is to help you learn from it, and not make the same mistakes again. Well, duh. If you keep fucking up the same stuff over and over again, you are a dunce—or it means you have an addiction. Me, I don’t make the same mistakes twice, but I keep finding ways to make new ones. But no, I don’t look at my past in horror anymore, and I don’t let my past define me. It’s part of who I am, but not the person I will be going forward. My conduct has not always been unimpeachable, which is a fancy way of saying that up until about 2006, I was a scumbag. Do I wish I could do things differently? Absolutely. But you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Meanwhile, the future can be a dark place, and I don’t want to go in there without a shotgun and a flashlight. In my mind, I have been broke, bankrupt, arrested, and humiliated—and none of it has ever happened. Life continues to get better day after day. I put myself through all this torture in my head. For no reason! We all do it. I know you do it. It is completely unproductive. I could power a 10-terawatt power plant with the amount of mental energy I spend living in the future. Long ago, I used to calculate probabilities of bad things happening. I’d say, there is a 1 in 100 chance of this bad thing happening, and a 1 in 100 chance of this bad thing happening, so there is a 1 in 10,000 chance that I will end up in jail. This was not really a good use of brainspace. I don’t do that anymore, though I still worry, which is also unproductive. By the way, the bad things that we are always catastrophizing about never happen. That’s not to say that bad things don’t happen, but it’s never the things that we are worrying about.

So the goal is to not live in the future, and to not live in the past, but to live in the present. I’m sure you’ve had these moments in your life where you’re on vacation in Riviera Maya and you walk out on your hotel room balcony in the morning, sit in a chair, and watch the sunrise. And for one fleeting moment—you are living in the present. You are enjoying this moment for what it is. Imagine if you could live your entire life like that? Not sitting in a chair in Mexico, but with that peace and serenity that comes from living in the present. I’m making it sound like it’s easy, but it’s not easy. There are monks and religious people who spend their entire lives trying to live in the moment. I suppose this is where meditation comes in, but I have never been any good at meditation—I have a very busy brain, and 10 seconds into it, my mind is off and running. Whatever works for you.

At the present moment, I am sitting on the couch in the living room in my new house, with my cats Tars, Yellow, and Zeus. I also have the Yankees game on. Am I living in the present? Not really—I owe a lot of money on this house and some ding-dong just canceled their subscription, so in my mind, there was a tiny increase in the probability that I will go bankrupt someday. I also have some other things on my mind at the moment. But I have had moments. Last night, I was in bed, listening to the rain on the roof of the house—that was cool. I will tell you the story of the first time I ever spent any time in the present—it was in 2009, and I was visiting a bank customer down in the World Financial Center, and when I walked out of the building, the sun was shining, and I was listening to my iPod. I even remember the track: Landmine Hopscotch by Shiloh. And there was something about that day, the temperature, the wind, the sun, the music, and for a few seconds—I was present in the moment. I never had many moments like that in my 30s. In my 40s, they became more common. I’d say that today, I spend about 20% of my time living in the present, up from zero percent 18 years ago. I am not the Dalai Lama—I will never get to 100%. My mind is often troubled. But I am much better than I used to be.

I will give you one piece of advice for living in the present: practice gratitude. If you are spending time thinking about things you don’t have, or things you want, you will be living in the future. If you are grateful for the things you have: your house, your marriage, your kids, your job, your health—you will be centered in the moment. So make a gratitude list—write down all the things that you are grateful for. Spend an hour on it, and don’t leave anything out. See how you feel afterwards. That’s all I got.