Life got sweeter when I realised the magic behind childhood wasn't because I was a child, it was because I was present.

Have you ever felt like you're in a state of flow? Like there's a perfect balance between chaos and order? where you're free to play, to laugh, to love, to get lost in the moment?

That's what being in the present feels like.

The worry of the past is absent, the dawning of the future is exciting, rather than worrying. Everything feels right. Everything aligns. Everything flows.

The present, interrupted

There's certain realities we don't have to think about as children. Most of us aren't responsible for paying bills or putting food on the table. For the most part, life was play. It was about following your curiosity.

That changes as we grow older. We need to start thinking about how we will earn a living, how we will care for our parents or children, what will our life's work be. The future dawns on us and that can be daunting or exciting.

The stoic perspective on present and future

The stoic perspective urges us to be grateful for and happy with our current situation. The present is the only graspable moment we have. The past is fixed and unchangeable. The future is dependent on our actions in the here and now.

The urgency of living in the present is captured in the stoic phrase "memento mori" (remember death or remember you will die). It reminds us that death will come to us all, so why not throw ourselves in?

Philippe de Champaigne's painting, Still Life with a Skull, expressed a similar concept. The painting depicted three essentials of existence — the tulip (life), the skull (death), and the hourglass (time). The original painting is part of a genre referred to as Vanitas, a form of 17th century artwork to represent the transcience of life and the certainty of death.

Our time here is short. We may as well spend that time doing the things we love as much as possible.

This is the life we have got

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. - Henry David Thoreau I grew up on a deprived council estate. I didn't quite know it at the time but on reflection I had a lot more opportunity than I realised. There was a world out there that I wanted to discover, one totally different to my own (or so I read in books) - I just had to find the right opportunities to get me there.

At 18, it seems like you're just a product of your environment - and maybe it feels like that's all you'll ever be. Then, as you get older, you realise how much control and agency you have over your life. How much opportunity was right there in front of you.

Plato's view

“How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it’s best to take a bird’s-eye view and see everything all at once—of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets—all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

One thing that can prevent us from truly enjoying the present is focusing too much on a particular thing. Plato's view urges us to zoom out to gain the bigger picture of a given situation or experience.

Think of climbing a mountain..the higher you go up, the smaller things seem but also more things can be seen. If you're on level with something, you're looking right at the details of it but if you're higher up you can see how it connects with other things, how it fits into a whole. The specific thing you were focused on at ground level often becomes less significant when looked at with Plato's view.

Abandon ideals

We strive for ideals, which (as Oscar Wilde reminds us) "are dangerous things." The prominence of social media amplifies this. It projects an ideal that we then compare ourselves too, sometimes subconsciously. Everything we see on there is perfect. People have the perfect bodies, the perfect job, the perfect family.

The problem is social media shows a one dimensional view of life. In reality, there's multiple factors at play that determine what our lives look like. The problem with comparison is that it's actually impossible to compare our unique set of circumstances to someone else's. We are way too idiosyncratic for that.

Do something every day that makes you feel alive

Find what you love and do it. Running into the cold sea. Spending time with a dog. Singing. Playing guitar. Writing. Bodybuilding.

Stop waiting. Stop waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment. Just take action here and now. Whatever it is, do it. As Thoreau states "breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”