Living in the moment

When reading chickbug yesterday, there was a post about engagements and how we, as women, these days want it all right away. I think there's something to be said about this. And I'm not just talking about love life (although, who am I kidding, I'm mostly talking about my love life). I feel like a lot of the time I spend daydreaming about and planning for the future or examining my past to see where I've made mistakes. I realized that I feel like I very rarely live in the moment. That's awful! Life won't be remembered by all the mistakes you've made in the past or how well you planned for the future. It will be about the little things, the daily life, the way you spent your life in the moment. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy going out with my friends, spending time with my family, and playing with my dog. But I think I need to start embracing life more.

This also fits for my relationships. Looking back on things, I think that when I'm in a relationship, I'm always thinking to myself "where's this going? can I spend the rest of my life with him? what does he mean when he says (fill in the blank)? does he want to spend the rest of his life with me? is this going where I want it to or am I wasting my time?" Basically I spend all my time in a relationship thinking about how it relates to my future. Then, when the relationship inevitably ends for whatever reason (usually because I pick the wrong guys, but I'm not placing blame here!), I spend my days wondering how it all went bad and what I could have done differently to prevent the break-up. I live in the sadness and remembering all the good times he and I had together and thinking about how those times will never happen again. And yet, when those times were actually happening, I'm not sure I fully enjoyed them because I was too worried about the future.

Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with planning for the future. I think it's something that needs to be done. You don't want to wake up one day to find yourself retired with no money left to afford anything, so some planning for the future is great and necessary. And I'm also not saying that examining the past is all bad. I've learned a lot from my past relationships and, although my most previous ex may say differently, I have mellowed out a lot when it comes to relationships. And this mellowing process has come from examining the past and making changes where I saw fit. I think I just need to find the perfect balance of examining the past and planning the future to allow for more living in the moment.