Attention to the Present Moment #076
Aldous Huxley's Island
The Power of Living in the Present Moment
I was telling you about Huxley who, in the mid-20th century, wrote a book called "Island" where he described his ideal society. One of the things on this island were the birds which had been trained to shout the word "attention" at people so that people would pay attention instead of, we would say today, looking at their smartphones. But it's not only the smartphones—we often are lost in our own thoughts. We often are lost in thoughts about our past or about the future, something we imagine will happen the next day, something we wish to have like a coffee or like a meal. And all these things, what they do is distract us from the present moment. And often this is what we want because the present moment is not really worth living.
The Importance of Present Moments
But what we forget is that our life is just a collection of present moments. If our present moment is not worth living and we distract ourselves from it by looking at something else, then this moment is gone. And the next moment will be gone, and the moment after will be gone, and we will not have any moments left. At some point, our life will be gone, and we will have just not lived because we were always distracting ourselves from living.
Wisdom Philosophies and Living in the Moment
This is something the Stoics, the Buddhists, and many other wisdom philosophies have pointed out—that the secret to happiness is living in the moment, living in this moment that is all around you right now. And I think we can occasionally during the day, you know, for five minutes, just put down our phone and stop our thoughts and just sit somewhere quietly and look at the world and enjoy the present moment. You can go to a park, you can sit on a bench, you can sit in a coffee shop, it can even be on your office desk, just a place where you can for a few minutes just look at the world as it is.
