When you look at the distant past and future, for example thinking about:
- the state of humanity in 1000 years,
- the life and cognitive capacity of the first Homo sapiens,
- the state of the earth in one million years,
- what was there before the Big Bang,
- whether the world will end,
you feel the here and now more strongly. The further away you look, the stronger your sense of presence becomes. Sometimes it might feel like you are waking up.
When you think about tomorrow and yesterday, you are lost in rumination, repetition, and stress.
This should be noted when reading “focus on the now” in self-improvement literature. Most of us are already preoccupied with minor daily concerns arising from our short-term plans and past rumination. That is precisely what we need to move away from. So when we encounter such advice, we might get confused or think that we are already doing it right when, in fact, we are going the opposite way.