Eyes Up

The power lines buzzed over my head, and my feet pounded over the rocks on the trail below. It was hot out, but not dead summer hot here in North Florida. The calendar had mercifully turned to the tenth month, my favorite time of the year, and my legs felt fresh and up to the task. 

I love getting lost in a run, letting my mind wander to places it might not usually go. In fact, over the years, I have kept the headphones out to save the distraction because half of my ideas come when I'm exercising. 

For whatever reason on this morning, I realized, as if for the first time, that running was an activity that kept you inherently grounded in the present. How I wouldn't have understood that concept before is crazy, but it's probably because, like most things in my life, I was looking everywhere but the here and now in what I was doing. 

Try running or walking with your eyes up, focused solely on the future of the trail or sidewalk for an extended period of time the next time you head out for a workout. 

Stay locked in tight on the horizon, and watch the sun as it stretches its rays to welcome the new day or curls up compactly into a sliver of orange disappearing over the edge of the world. 

For fun, try to look backward too. 

See how long it lasts before you're forced to immediately return to the present and the placement of your next step. 

I am consumed right now with attempting to live in the present, and as I have for years now, failing miserably at it.

Ok, decades. 

But I realized on this run that my reasoning for the connection to the present moment was because I had to be.

If it didn't stay in the moment, I could trip and fall on the rocks, roots, or divots in the trail or step squarely on top of the snake I saw wriggling onto the trail halfway through the workout. 

Up, was where I was headed. 

Down was where I was.

Up, meant little course corrections to keep me on the path.

Down meant that my feet fell in the right places so I could stay on track. 

Up, held the unknown.

What if I got to the next rise and the road was closed, or a gator was lying in my way (Welcome to Florida)?

I could spend every step fixated on the end, and just as I approached closer, realize that I needed to change course just when I thought I was at the finish line. 

This situation has happened to me a lot over the last twenty years. 

I have missed the trees for the forest. 

So many hours, days, and weeks worried about a future that, with the gift of hindsight, was correct...maybe 3% of the time.

That means that 97% of the time, I was wrong. 

Nine-Seven-Percent. 

Not nine by itself.

Not seven.

Ninety-seven. 

That means (and it's uncomfortable to say this out loud) that I have been living much of my adult life as a perpetual mirage, an oasis dangled to make me think there was water at the end of it, a desert of self-imposed despair. 

As I navigated around the snake, I thanked him for being there (no shit, I literally said thank you as I skirted well past him). 

I thanked him for keeping me in the present because it is the present day that is filled with all your problems. 

The present is filled with all your fears. 

And the present is filled with all your opportunities. 

Lifting your head to the future too often means that you will be forever chasing a mirage, and when you land upon it, if you accidentally do, it will look completely different up close than it did from days, months, and years before. 

THE ULTIMATE PRESENT

One Day At A Time. 

The five most important words ever uttered to me, but sometimes the simplest concepts are the hardest to grasp.

I learned this for the first time in 2005 when the present consisted of nothing more than me trying to drown myself daily, the mere thought of a future without my closest compatriot, an idea that I could never bear. 

What about weddings? 

Funerals?

Tuesdays?

And then, many years later, when I needed those five words again, they stood there, ready to help me wage another battle. 

I still need them today and use them often. 

Each gauntlet that life throws down, every time it throws its gloves on the mat and calls me into the ring to kick the shit out of me again with bare knuckles, I get the chance to put those words into practice.

They call me back to the present like a lighthouse on a foggy New England night. 

If you are fighting right now and it's too much to take, forever stuck running with your eyes to the horizon, then you just need to replace a single word. 

One hour.

One minute.

One second. 

And in the grand scheme of things, all you get is the latter anyway. 

Keep your eyes up too far, and you'll stumble.

Waste your time looking backward, and you'll find that you skip the present in favor of things better off left behind you on the trail. 

EO- Live a Life Worth Watching