Waiting for Tomorrow

The true tragedy of life today is that most of us are looking towards the future.

We're waiting for that “one day” when we get the job, the friends, the vacation or the good health we want.

Then, we tell ourselves, we will finally be happy.

In the meantime we'll try to scuttle around and get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Whatever is in-between those two points is just filler, not really life.

Oddly enough though 99.9% of our lives is filled with “filler”.

For me it's walking. Waiting for the bus. Showering. Brushing my teeth. Sleeping. Reading. Casual socializing. Working.

The “Point B” moments, those moments where something awesome or significant happens, occur much more infrequently. Categorizing life like this, like a series of events passing us by, is pretty messed up.

But it's how a great majority of people live their lives.

AUTO-PILOT

Many of us are just robots, sleepwalking from one thing to the next. We wake up and do our chores without much vigor or joy. Chores are just tasks to be crossed off the list, to get to the next thing.

Think about the last time you brushed your teeth. Do you even remember how you felt? Do you remember the feeling of the toothpaste bubbling up in your mouth? Do you remember scrubbing each tooth individually? Or is it just a fog of memory?

The way we answer this seemingly innocuous question reveals quite a lot about how we live our lives.

If you are just sleepwalking through most of your day, waiting to get to some sort of stimulation like TV or alcohol or sex or a raise or to go to a concert, you are unconsciously writing a program into your brain.

You're embedding a pattern of thinking in your brain that says “Let's just see how quickly we can get to the next stimulation that will tickle my little need to be titillated.”

And just like a drug, the amount of stimulation you need to feel satisfied becomes greater and greater each and every time. Instead of being satisfied by one TV show, you end up watching hours of show after show.

At one point in my life I was addicted to TV. I would end up sitting in front of the screen for 8 hours at a time.

Did I really enjoy watching the television?

No. I remember I would end up turning off the screen after a long marathon of shows feeling like a ball of crap. How did I end up wasting that much time today? I don't feel any better than when I pressed the “on” button. Why can't I turn this off?

My brain was programmed to “enjoy” this particular stimulation. After repeating this habit on a daily basis it became harder and harder to break the cycle. Suddenly a simple thing like turning the TV off seemed impossible.

Our brains will accept almost anything we expose it to. It does not differentiate between productive and unproductive behaviors.

So when we begin to live every day waiting for the next “Point B” moment, we are programming this way of thinking into our brains. I call it Zombie mode. The more our brain is exposed to Zombie mode, the easier it is to fall into it. More important, it becomes a great deal more challenging to break loose from it.

Zombie Mode!

And think about it; day after day after day of living like this will make life seem really dull.

You won't know it of course, because the change is always gradual. Months will have gone past and you won't even notice you have slipped into this pattern of thinking. The only thing you might notice is a great deal of discomfort when you are in between the “Point B” moments.

THE SOLUTION

The solution is not quick-fix. The solution is to be present to the moment.

And this means re-training your brain to just be happy/satisfied/content with being in solitude or not being stimulated.

It can take a long time. It takes some focus and there will most definitely be pain. But in the end no one would ever regret it.