health

Anyone else spend too much time hanging out on Planet What-If?


I came to this conclusion after dipping into a book called The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Oprah raved about it last year but when Dave Hughes mentioned he was reading it on Twitter a while back, the deal was sealed. How could I resist a book endorsed by both Hughsie and Oprah? More importantly, why would I want to?

Quickly, I added it to my large collection of Books-I-Will-Never-Finish. My new-age concentration span falls off a cliff after a few chapters so under my bedside table lies a graveyard of books on happiness and Buddhism and being a better parent and optimism. I’m hoping to absorb their contents via osmosis while I sleep which is a pretty optimistic idea, so perhaps it’s working.

Anyway, I’ve realised lately how shocking I am at living in the now. My symptoms include vagueness, anxiety and distractedly banging into furniture. I hadn’t directly associated any of these things with an inability to be present until I read page 50 of my new book: “Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness….are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”

Sound like anyone you know?

A few days after we brought our first baby home from hospital, my husband and I were blissfully marvelling at the perfection of our son’s teeny tiny little fingers. Suddenly, my eyes filled with tears. “What’s wrong?” he asked. My voice was wobbly with emotion as I replied “How will we make sure he uses condoms when he gets older? What if he gets an STD?”

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The look on my husband’s face at that moment translated roughly as: “You are a lunatic who has landed from another planet.”
And this is true. Forget Venus, I come from Planet Hypothetical whose population is almost exclusively female. Living there is TORTUROUS. It is a land of angst and uncertainty. Of hopes and nightmares. Of endless potential for good or bad. It’s a land of ‘what if…’ and self-recrimination and many sleepless nights.

Aware of my rampant post-birth hormones, my patient husband made up some garbage about how by the time our son was old enough to need condoms, scientists will have found a way to eradicate STDs. That shut me up briefly until I had a new thought. “One day, he’s going to love another woman more than he loves me….” And that thought was almost too much to bear.

Of course, the frustrating thing for future dwellers like me is that you never get there. There’s always more future until, well, there isn’t. And even then, depending on your beliefs, there’s more to come. The possibilities are endless, which can be at once exhilarating and stressful to contemplate. I’ve spent each of my pregnancies madly worrying about my babies’ safe delivery. As soon as that blessedly occurs, I immediately begin worrying about the rest of their lives. It’s exhausting.

As women, we stop living in the now early on. We’re always trying on the next stage of life for size whether it’s prancing around in mummy’s high heels, writing our ‘married’ names during a high school crush or asking each other “when will you be moving in / getting engaged / having a baby?”

I think shopping is another manifestation of my inability to live in the present moment. Whether I’m buying food, clothes or hair products, it’s all about how my life COULD be in the future. It’s not about cooking with what’s in my fridge now, it’s about buying new ingredients for the tasty meal I’d like to cook (but invariably don’t). It’s not about creating outfits from the clothes I already own, it’s about hunting for the new jacket that will magically pull my entire wardrobe together (but invariably doesn’t).

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Ditto the mystery product that will make my hair look naturally tousled like Jennifer Anniston’s. I know it’s out there. I can see it in my mind.

Meanwhile, scrap booking and Facebooking and making slideshows and celebrating anniversaries? They’re about the past. I think that’s why men forget anniversaries. It’s because they excel at now not nostalgia. And they can thank evolution for that. When a woolly mammoth was bearing down on Joe Caveman, there was no time to sift through hypotheticals or reflect on past mammoths. It was eat or be eaten.

Back at the cave, Joanna Cavewoman had a safe environment in which to gather salad greens and ponder the future (should we move to a better cave? Does this animal skin make me look fat or am I just knocked up again?) and reminisce about the past (remember that first romantic night when he clubbed me over the head and dragged me home by my hair?).

Hughsie and Oprah? I’m trying.

Do you hear me? Have trouble living in the present?  Preoccupied with the hypothetical?