Travelling Hippy

It’s winter in New Zealand, but this morning I sat on my deck for an hour feeling the sun warming my pale skin. Blackbirds were tootling away in the neighbour’s trees. Occasionally I heard cars driving past on the road 114 steps below my house. It seemed like spring had finally arrived and as I relaxed in seated pose on the bare wood with a book I felt nothing but serenity. Not exactly peaceful, not at-one-with-the-world, just grateful and comfortable in this moment right here: on the coast of beautiful New Zealand on a warm clear day with time on my hands and no stress.

That’s easy to feel on a pretty morning like this one. Which makes me only too aware that it’s not something I can admit to feeling each and every day. I want to ‘enjoy the moment’, I really do. I know that that’s what life is all about – being content and satisfied with what you have right now, rather than craving what you had yesterday or last year, or longing for a ‘better’ future.

All I have is today. The choices I made in the past that led to me existing in this place right now are irrelevant. What may happen tomorrow, a month or a year from now is unknowable. Right here, this moment, is everything – so it must be the best thing that I have. I want to appreciate this moment every moment. I want to feel like this is the best place all the time.

It’s not going to be an easy task. I’ve always been a dreamer. My head is full of other lives I could be currently leading and a plethora of ‘future mes’ living here, working there and in a relationship with him. None of these dreams are real, though. What’s real is that I am alive now, in New Zealand, working there and not exactly in a relationship. These were my choices, this is my reality. And it’s the best place because it’s the place I brought myself and the only place I want to be right now.

Let’s all try to live like this as much as we can. Let’s help each other see what we have in this moment and not what we used to have or what we wish we had. Because if “the best place is right here, this moment” then life is pretty perfect and we already have everything we could possibly dream of.