A Case To Stop Waiting And Start Appreciating The Present

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We spend so much of our lives waiting. Waiting in line, waiting for a train, waiting for the end of the work day. We start the week and immediately wish for Friday. We have a tough month or year, and nothing else matters until you can start over again.

We wait for things to get better, to have better, to be better. No matter how much greatness there is to appreciate in life, there’s always a part of us unsatisfied. Wishing for that piece that we feel is missing, tangible or intangible.

A lot can do with the comparing of our lives to others, whether it’s based on real-time or social media. Why doesn’t my wardrobe look like that? Why do I not have an engagement ring on my finger? How are people traveling so much?

We are constantly looking at other people’s lives, acting like we have a clue what actually goes on behind closed doors. While I fully support sharing important moments in your life with others, they let you see what they want you to– and it’s through rose-colored lenses. It’s never the fights, hardships or pain points that we see, which would make you realize that they don’t have it ‘together’ as much as you thought.

It can also be our subconscious insisting that there can be more than what you have. You work towards a promotion, a weight loss goal, to finish a book that has taken you literal years to read through. When you finally hit your goal, whatever it may be, instead of celebrating you are already thinking of what you can conquer next. While that drive in you should never be something to be ashamed of, it creates this mindset of dissatisfaction with the present because you can’t stop thinking about the potential future.

I don’t know if anyone reading this thought I had a solution, but I don’t. I don’t have answers, because I’m guilty of the above sometimes as well.

What I do know is that the older I get, the more I realize that time is fleeting. Happiness, goodness, sadness, and darkness– we want to either hold onto it tightly or rid ourselves of it, but at the end of the day, it can disappear with or without us deciding.

There needs to be more appreciating what we have, and less waiting for what we don’t. Maybe then we’ll start to realize that the present is worth sticking around for after all.