What are the logistics of foresight? Behavioral zoologists say foresight, the ability to see and plan ahead, is an important attribute that defines the line between us and simpler creatures. Indeed, we can’t help it. Every step we take it seems is not without anticipation for the next one and where it might place us. We work ourselves hard for the dividends it pays down the road. We think and we decide. We decide and we choose. We contemplate and then we act (see previous post).
…But what an ironic duality: living in the present, for the future. We are foresighted creatures with the inability to ignore the consequences of our decision-making. Yet we are so much more than that. We get lost in beautiful moments. We are drawn towards those sensations which are at once the most powerful and the most mysterious. We also teach ourselves that nothing lasts forever. The present is powerful.
The very notion of the ’future’ takes for granted a reference point. That reference point is this moment, the present. Thus the future needs the present to exist (By “need” I mean conceptual dependence). Likewise, the past needs the present. The present is the center of our world, it is the birthplace and eternal resting place of consciousness and of our mind. Might one call it the substance of our consciousness? Yes, the moment. Always fleeting yet always arriving. Look at a spot on a blank wall late one night after everyone is asleep. Nothing is moving, nothing is happening. But if you read past the wall, you will see the white noise of perception… if you listen past the silence you will hear the passing of time. Is this the future slipping through the momentous present? Perhaps you might like to think of it that way. I do.
Yet what is most interesting is what happens when we fully acknowledge the power and gravity of the present… and apply it.
We may want to become lost in it, and indeed we will (and must) become lost in it. The weight of the moment is never put to waste for man learns quickest when he is lost. As with psychedelic journeys, there is no waste in becoming lost for as long as you can “bring back the goods”, thats the whole point. Learning from the moment is really the whole point because the next step is the controlling of the moment and its power over future ‘nows’. Not now, but now.
Knowing how to preserve a beautiful feeling, knowing how to let it go… only to get it back again. Thats living in the present, for the future. Thats power.
