What used to work doesn’t anymore.
Things aren’t the same as they used to be. You aren’t the same person you used to be.
Not yesterday. Not a month ago. Not a year or 10 years ago.
You want to be. You want to wake up and have your body, your mind, your career, your business work exactly as they’ve always worked. Your coworkers and friends and children are supposed to fit neatly into the framework of who you think they are, too.
Of who they’ve always been to you.
Because to admit that things change is to admit mortality and that’s not anyone’s favorite subject.
So you fool yourself into believing one of two things:
1. That nothing has changed
2. That everything was better, easier, simpler before today.
You remember things being how they were, then, as if that will prevent them from becoming something different.
But you remember through the lens of today.
Not as things were then. Not as things were when you were going through them.
This is what makes mindfulness so bloody hard. You develop the discipline of awareness, and the better you get at it, the more aware of what you have right now becomes. You learn how to hold this moment while watching yourself holding this moment. You know what you’re experiencing won’t last, and that that’s okay.
Because your future self awaits. Your future experiences await.
Letting go of what used to work to make room for what does is the goal.
And that can be the hardest lesson of all to learn.
