Living in the now
I didn’t get a chance to read West of Rome or Endgame, two of the books that I got from the library a few weeks ago. I however did read and greatly enjoy Full of Life. There’s something I really like about reading stories related to Catholicism, growing up catholic and their experiences written by ex-catholics.
I read Waiting for Godot for the book club last night, the discussion wasn’t nearly as good as the week before, but still a lot of fun. The next book is going to be Fear and Trembling by Sören Kierkegaard, I’m pretty stoked about it because I’ve only read one small essay by Kierkegaard before.
I’m heading up to northern California this weekend for Sarah and Jason’s wedding, I’ll be camping somewhere and then spending some time in the bay area before coming back south next weekend. I figure I’ll have plenty of time to do some reading. I renewed West of Rome and Endgame from the library, I can’t picture a better place to read Endgame than in the middle of a redwood forest. I’m going to go by the library and get Fear and Trembling, I’m also hoping to pick up The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman (the last book in the Golden Compass trilogy). I’ve been wanting to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being again, so I’m going to try to find a copy of that before I leave also.
I also downloaded some audiobooks for the long drive, I’ve never been able to listen to an audiobook all the way through, so hopefully I’ll manage better this time. I got A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway (which is by far one of my favorite books). I got On the Road by Kerouac, a book that I enjoyed when I read it. And Neuromancer by William Gibson because I’ve never read it.
Lastly I downloaded The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle. Some friends of mine had been listening to it as an audiobook while driving and mentioned something about it. I guess its sort of a “self help” book about living in the moment. It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago, that was just a sort of rambling travelogue about a guy trying to figure out what is and is not important in the world. One of his friends in the book had a philosophy of “living in the now”, not worrying about the past, present and future consequences of actions.
I really enjoyed the book, the author is a fairly folky, not quite famous southwesterner that just seems to have a lot of fun in life, and this book was a lot of fun to read. (After I finished reading it I gave it to a friend of mine and she had the exact same reaction I did — we both wanted to quit our jobs and move to Utah). After I finished reading it I tried to “live in the now”, but never quite succeeded fully. I feel like I did, and still do, a pretty good job at it, but there’s balance to it (which isn’t bad). I’ve become more spontaneous (which is good), but still think about consequences in many situations (which isn’t necessarily bad).
There are many things I like about the idea of living for the moment, but a lot of things I don’t like (but can’t really reconcile). When I’m extremely spontaneous and truly feel like I’m “living in the now” I sometimes feel like I’m trading something in the future for something now — say trading in future happiness for current happiness. When I really think about it I shouldn’t feel that way. I have no idea if I’ll be happy in the future, regardless of my actions, all I can know is the present. When talking philosophy with friends we often criticism the lifestyle and actions of people we see as doing this, selling the present in the hopes of cashing in on it in the future, those that don’t affirm life but deny it (to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche). Living in the now is to affirm life, you can’t possibly know what the future will hold, so why deny life now in the hopes that that denial will make something better happen in the future. One of the biggest problems I see (and one of things that holds me back most often from living in the now) is the idea of regret. The idea that I’ll do something now, and things will turn out worse than if I had not done that, and I will have to live with the regret from that action. I think the idea of regret is powerful like that, because the feeling of regret is powerful, but I can truly say there have been very few things in my life I’ve done that I’ve regretted. On the other hand there have been plenty of things I’ve not done, that I’ve avoided, and have later looked back on that inaction and regretted not doing it. Luckily that doesn’t happen too much either, I feel like I’ve found a happy medium of spontaneously living in the moment, without disregarding the future and consequences too much.
