Your Only Moment of Power Is Now
I have become an expert at living everywhere except where I am. This morning, while my son told me about his dreams, I was mentally rehearsing a conversation I needed to have next week. During lunch, I was replaying an argument from three days ago, editing my responses, perfecting comebacks for a battle already lost. By evening, I realized I had spent the entire day as a refugee from the present moment, seeking asylum in the imagined safety of other times.
When did the present become the most uncomfortable place to be?
We flee backward into memory, where every story has an ending and every mistake can be analyzed from the safety of survival. We escape forward into fantasy, where we finally become the people we think we should be, where conversations go perfectly and outcomes align with our hopes.
But we rarely stay here—in the messy, uncertain, unedited reality of now.
Yesterday offers the illusion of control through understanding. We can dissect what happened, assign meaning to events, craft narratives that make sense of confusion. The past is a completed puzzle, even if we don’t like the picture it makes. There’s comfort in the finality, in knowing how things turned out, in being able to say “at least it’s over.”
Tomorrow promises the possibility of redemption. The future is where we’ll finally get organized, finally have difficult conversations, finally become the people we’ve been meaning to be. Tomorrow we’ll eat better, exercise more, be kinder, work harder, love better. Tomorrow is the land of second chances and fresh starts.
But today? Today is uncertainty. Today is having to make choices without knowing their outcomes. Today is dealing with people as they actually are rather than as we remember them or hope they’ll become. Today is feeling whatever you feel without the benefit of hindsight or the promise of resolution.
The present moment demands participation rather than observation. It asks us to be here completely—with our imperfect understanding, our incomplete information, our messy emotions—without the safety net of knowing how things turn out or the comfort of editing our experience after the fact.
So we develop elaborate strategies of temporal displacement. We live in constant preparation for a life that never arrives because we’re always preparing for it rather than living it. We postpone contentment until conditions improve, until we achieve certain goals, until other people change in ways that make our lives easier.
Or we retreat into the edited version of what already happened, spending energy on conversations that are over, relationships that have ended, opportunities that passed. We become archaeologists of our own experience, constantly digging up what’s buried instead of planting what could grow.
I watch my son, and he lives with an enviable commitment to now. When he’s building with blocks, he’s not thinking about yesterday’s tower that fell down or tomorrow’s castle he might construct. He’s here, in this moment, placing this block on that one, fully absorbed in the only time that actually exists.
But I’ve taught myself to see the present as something to get through rather than something to experience. The morning routine is just what happens before the real day begins. The conversation with my wife is just maintenance that must be performed before we can move on to more important things. The afternoon with my son is just something to document for future nostalgia rather than something to inhabit completely.
What am I so afraid of in this moment that makes me flee to other times? Maybe it’s the responsibility of being fully present—having to respond to what’s actually happening rather than what I wish were happening or what I remember happening. Maybe it’s the intensity of unfiltered experience, the way reality demands our full attention rather than our partial presence.
Or maybe it’s the recognition that this moment—imperfect as it is—is the only one I actually have any influence over. Yesterday is archaeology. Tomorrow is speculation. Today is the only laboratory where change can actually happen, where love can actually be expressed, where life can actually be lived.
The refugees of now carry a particular sadness: we’re homesick for our own lives. We long for presence while actively avoiding it, seek peace while constantly fleeing the only moment where peace is possible.
Tonight, I want to try something radical: I want to come home to now. Not because this moment is perfect, but because it’s real. Not because the present offers guarantees, but because it offers possibility. Not because today is easier than yesterday or tomorrow, but because today is where I actually exist.
Because maybe the present isn’t the place we escape from—it’s the place we’ve been trying to get back to all along.