You see, these worries are the me of the present — without the graces God can give me in the future — believing I will fail.
Of course the me of the present will fail at the future task. He lacks the strength God provides, only in the moment, to handle whatever happens — which, by the way, will probably be very different than what I expect.
Regret and worry, these are two of the greatest plagues of our time, and they only exist because we have this incredible ability to imaginatively inhabit a past or a future.
Regret is a bringing of the past into the present moment. Worry is a bringing of the future into the present moment. As far as we know, no other creature on Earth has the ability to perform such sorcery; at least not to the degree that we do.
Mosquitos have a million babies because they can’t stop before crossing the road and imagine that, if they don’t look both ways, a bus might run them over. If they didn’t have a million babies, the species wouldn’t survive.
Humans don’t need to have a million babies because we can stop before crossing the road and imagine a future scenario in which a bus might run us over. In a sense, we’re able to produce a million lives — what richness! — with our imaginations so that we don’t need to produce a million lives in reality for our species to survive.
It’s an incredible gift, really, to be able to imagine. Yet, I am continually amazed by the number of problems that can be attributed to this gift, this ability to inhabit imaginary moments outside of the present reality.
Most creatures inhabit only the present moment, especially on a conscious level. Humans, though, can imagine past moments and future moments. This makes it impossibly difficult for us to inhabit only the present moment.
When we do not fully inhabit the present, we are bathing in a wealth of time, an abundance of past and future.
The present, though, is always passing, along with all that we have in it, and so it’s a place where little, if any, wealth exists. For this reason, one who inhabits only the present is, in some sense, poor in spirit.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
The richness of past and future has been given to us, as a gift, from God. It’s a way for us to choose something other than his love and his grace.
Why is such a thing a gift? Because unconditional love, true love, cannot be forced upon someone. It’s not love if it’s not freely given and freely accepted. There must be a freedom, held by the receiver, to deny the love. Otherwise, it’s not love. Love is never forced.
Our ability to inhabit an imaginary past or future is one way we can deny God’s love by escaping to a place where his love does not exist.
Of course, this denial makes us miserable because all that is good is part of God. By denying him, we are denying ourselves the source of all goodness.
Yet we are fallen. We suffer from original sin. We are rich in our ability to inhabit a broad span of time through imagination, and it’s nearly impossible for us to give up that richness. Maybe it is impossible.
Possible or not, this ability to inhabit a past or future moment in the present is wealth on a fundamental level.
“The miser whose treasure has been taken from him. It is some of the frozen past which he has lost. Past and future, man’s only riches.”
Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace
The dopaminergic system is what, at a neurological level, drives us. The dopaminergic system is all about anticipating some future reward based on past experiences.
Neuroscientists call dopamine a “universal currency.”
“Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals, especially humans, for moving us towards goals. How much dopamine is in our system at any one time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago and how much we remember enjoying a particular experience of the past dictates your so-called quality of life and your desire to pursue things.”
Dr Andrew Huberman, Found My Fitness Episode 91
A particular experience of the past drives us to pursue or not pursue something. Pursuit is an anticipation, a seeking of some future thing.
Coffee made me feel good in the past. I am driven to pursue more coffee. Most of coffee’s perceived value exists only because we remember how it made us feel in the past and can imagine feeling that way again in the future.
Your caregiver broke your heart in the past. Now, you will be driven to avoidance or possessiveness due to the past injuries. Much of a relationship’s perceived value (or lack thereof) exists only because we remember how a relational pattern made us feel in the past and can imagine feeling that way again in the future.
The past can cause us very real pain in the present. At the same time, we often give it more power than it deserves.
Even though it causes us pain to do so, we often fixate on painful memories. Why? Because doing so can save our lives, can prevent present and future recurrences.
It’s very useful to be able to imagine that if I step in front of a bus then the bus will hit me.
But we take on this richness in excessive or disordered ways. We fixate on worst case scenarios and rob ourselves of not only the fullness of joy available in the present, but also of any joy we might have had by imagining what could go right, by expecting miracles instead of disasters.
“Always trust. Trust more and more, even to the point of expecting a miracle. Don’t stop halfway or you will set limits to my love. Always count on me, never on yourself.”
Gabrielle Bossis, quoted in Fear is Useless by Conrad Baars
Focusing on the present, or at least the best of the past and future, doesn’t always help. Sometimes our subconscious minds, or maybe our bodies, hold onto regrets or worries without our awareness.
These are like daemons that leech onto the richness that is our memory and our imagination. They are the excesses and disorders that inhabit only the backgrounds of our minds, existing only as unnamed, unidentified dark feelings in the present.
The infant who was left crying in her crib all night, un-soothed by her mother; she doesn’t remember those terrible nights, but many years later, she feels the same terror when her husband doesn’t answer her phone call.
Daemons — subconscious auto-pilot programming — can use our wealth of memory and imagination against us even when we’re not consciously thinking about the past or the future.
While the answer to worry and regret — which are conscious thoughts — is a shift in focus toward the present moment, good memories of the past, and hope for the future; the answer to daemons is a shift in focus toward Christ.
When it comes to daemons, we have a couple unique strengths. We have self-awareness, which allows us to see our behavioral patterns, and we have the freedom to behave in ways contrary to those patterns.
As we become aware of our instinctive patterns, we must use our freedom to break the harmful ones, and to guide our actions toward love.
Still, we will fail. But the more we fail, the more we ache, the more we recognize our own shortcomings, the more we are open to receiving grace. And grace, received through faith and focus on Christ, is the true salvation.
Many problems plague us due to our richness of past and future, of memory and imagination. To experience more joy in the present moment, much of our strength must be spent making ourselves poor in those things.
We will rarely, if ever, be able to live completely, nakedly in the present. But the more we try, the more we practice, the more open we will be to experiencing the fullness of joy in the present moment.
Still, there will be times when we cannot merely inhabit the present. To apologize when we’ve done something wrong, we must acknowledge the past. To prevent the same failure from happening repeatedly, we must anticipate it. But when it’s not absolutely necessary to remember a wrong or anticipate a failure, it is best for us to focus on the good memories, not the bad ones, and to hope for and expect miracles, not disasters.
That, in many ways, is a work of faith. Being present requires faith — faith that things can be different than they were in the past, faith that grace will be given in whatever measure necessary for us to navigate whatever comes. Faith is essential.
Here’s some practical advice. As an act of faith, spend a few minutes each day embodying yourself in the present moment. Go for a walk outside. Using all of your senses, remind yourself of what you notice, what it reminds you of, and what you wonder about it.
Just a few minutes of this each day will strengthen your ability to experience the present more often and more deeply. It will help you take off your fancy garments of past and future.
And when you can’t embody the present — you’re only human after all — remember something good, or imagine a future where everything works out in your favor, where grace favors you and joy is yours.
The world wants you
To be a tool for its use.
Refuse.
Hold your brokenness high.
Your bleeding wounds, lift up.
The pain, don’t trade it for anything.
It is your living.
Do not fit in,
Especially when it costs you money,
Especially, especially, especially
When it costs you you.
Give up every happiness
To stay wild.
Give up everything
To love the one who sets you free.
A beloved being who disappoints me. I wrote to him. It is impossible that he should not reply by saying what I have said to myself in his name.
Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.
I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
On page 79 (later on in Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil), she explains the “renunciation of God.” She doesn’t mean a person renouncing God.
She means this. God creates us so that he is not everything. He renounces being everything.
So, to accept that someone is more than what we imagine them to be, to accept that they are subject, not object, is to renounce being everything — I am not the center of the universe.
Inside of me,
A place where wild things roam,
A flock I must shepherd,
A garden I must tend
Through storms and attacks,
Famine, entropy, growth...growth
— Is it not all growth?
Growth to be hedged and pruned,
Encouraged here, enticed there,
To be nurtured into something beautiful.
And what of these thorny worries?
I've let them grow, expecting fruit,
But they've only become a mess.
I try pruning,
But they only grow back stronger.
Instead, I'll try to crowd them out.
I'll scatter, all among them,
Little seeds of prayer, and of faith
That I'll receive the grace
To handle whatever comes, when it comes.
Since the moment it entered my mind, perhaps a year ago now, I’ve been unable or unwilling to let go of the notion that “matter is a phase of consciousness.”
I imagine it like this. Everything created is a flowing river. Sometimes, something uncreated splashes into the river and creates ripples. Those ripples are our material lives. They are us from dust. And when they even back out, we are still there in the flowing river.
Is this notion only delightful? Or is it true?
The powers of this world, through seemingly benign language, curse us.
Shaming and invalidating language can spread through songs, coworkers, neighbors, family members, movies, and just about any other medium. This kind of language is viral and toxic, and it works in the most sinister way.
Repeated phrases become repeated thoughts, repeated thoughts become repeated feelings, and repeated feelings become core beliefs. Even a common, seemingly harmless phrase can perpetuate a cycle of shame or distorted belief. Take, for example, this phrase from a popular Blink 182 song: “Don’t waste your time on me.”
In many cases, we apply no meaning to such a phrase. It’s just a catchy lyric that bounces around between our ears. But when our lived experience seems to line up with the phrase, when we’re wounded or hurt, the phrase takes on a certain life of its own and lives inside us, leeching our courage and disavowing our humanity.
When I say, “don’t waste your time on me,” it implies two terrible lies: one, that spending time on me is a waste of time, that spending time on a human being could possibly be a waste of time; and two, that the person spending time is not smart enough to use their time wisely, that they waste their time, and that time is a currency.
These lies promote a sense of shame, scarcity, broken relations, and, ultimately, untrue core beliefs. They are toxic.
They are spread through a single line in a simple song, a curse. And we have endless access to an endless number of very catchy songs, catchphrases, movie quotes, etc, with curses just like that one.
For our own mental wellness, for our own perception of reality, we must examine the language we use in our thoughts and in our speech.
The phrases we think, listen to, and speak are healthiest when they support positive social interaction; acknowledge the full dignity of every human person; promote a realistic sense of abundance, especially of the abundance of love; express emotion and experience with integrity, courage, and honesty; encourage ourselves and others to bear challenges and sufferings; inspire wonder by asking questions without demanding answers; and thank, praise, and glorify God, The Good Father.
But we don’t need to worry about a list of phrases that are okay or not. We only need to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” (Colossians 3:2) We only need to dispose our attention toward God, love, and virtue. Then, we will find freedom from the curses that the powers of this world place upon us.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Romans 12:2
The following was originally part of a novel I’m working on. In the editing process, I realized it didn’t fit there, but it still seemed worth sharing, so here it is.
I used to hate people. Then I figured out why. I still hate them sometimes, but I am mostly able to overcome it now.
I hated people because I thought people hated me, or at least didn’t care about me. And I thought my value was dependent on what they thought of me. And so I ultimately hated myself because I thought they hated me, and I thought that meant I was less of a human.
When I hated myself, I hated everyone else, too, because when we hate something, we hate what we perceive as flaws. My friend didn’t call me back, so he must not value me. Either he is flawed because he is wrong about me, about my value, or I am flawed because he is right about me, about my value. And so I hated. I hated flawed-ness. And because I hated flawed-ness, I hated human beings because human beings are flawed.
You know how that cycle of hatred is broken? I’ve only found one way: forgiveness. You can hate or you can forgive. If you hate, you turn whoever you hate into something less than human in your mind. You reduce them to an object and then throw it away. If you forgive, you love, and if you love, you give your attention.
I hope that makes sense. It’s important to me. It changed my life. Forgiveness isn’t easy, but it’s really the only way out of hate in a world full of flawed beings.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean, “you can do whatever you want to me.” It means something more like, “I refuse to see you as an object, to strip you of your humanity. I will see your flaws and still recognize that you are a whole person, so much more than your flaws.”
I have to remind myself about forgiveness quite often. It’s so easy to fall into hate. But it’s so much better to struggle to love.
In this world, there are places with God and places without God. That is for a very good reason. If there were no places without God, we would have nowhere to run from him.
For God’s love to be real, we must have the freedom to refuse it, to refuse him. It’s not true love if it’s not a gift, and it’s not a gift unless it can be refused. If we couldn’t refuse it, it would be an imposition, not a gift.
God makes his love a gift by giving us places to go where his love is not, where he is not. But a place without God, the source of all life, is a place with death. Death is the cost of a world where love exists.
Because we are loved, death is a part of this world.
Today, Catholics celebrate Passion Sunday, in which we remember Christ being deeply troubled upon seeing his friend, Mary of Bethany, weeping.
In John 11:33, Christ’s behavior is described with an intense Greek word, enebrimēsato, that translates to something like “he snorted in spirit.” Christ groaned from the depths of his soul, like a sobbing child, upon seeing the pain that death has caused his friend. He grieves at the pain caused by loving imperfect lovers.