Living in the Now.

Living in the now is this week's topic for our group of bloggers. Hop aboard and lets see what - if anything - of interest we encounter as I enter  my eighth different decade on this 3rd rock from the sun.

I have lived in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s and here we are in the 2020s. What a long, strange trip it's been.  That's a whole lotta nows that have come and gone.

Since I have been old enough or aware enough to have a guide in life this has summed it up - "Yesterdays over my shoulder but I can't look back for too long. There's just too much to see waiting in front of me and I know that I just can't go wrong". That is a forward looking way to attack life and though there have been missteps along the way I am still here pushing forward. I have  crushed a few curveballs along the way and done my Mighty Casey act as well.

When you are a kid it is easy to live in the now AKA today. Today is fun. Mistakes? Well they are soon forgotten although hopefully you catch on  to the value in not repeating them.

One of the things I learned  was that competition is good for you. I went to a school called Carlile in my hometown of Pueblo, Colorado. My best buddy there  was a kid named Dave Perkins. Dave's older brothers and my uncle Chuck raised significant hell together - the kind that left someone in authority to offer my uncle 2 choices - jail or the military. Chuck picked the Marines and off he went. The word filtered down to keep that Perkins kid and that Higgins kid in separate classes as they feared a second onslaught of trouble. Alas, someone at Carlile goofed and Dave and I were in the same class from kindergarten through 4th grade when I moved to California. 

The only hell Dave and I raised was with each other. We competed in everything. Whenever we had quizzes in school we were told to stand when we finished - and every time the first thing Dave and I did was look for each other, and typically one of us was first and the other second and whoever was first had bragging rights that day. It soon became clear to our folks that we couldn't be kept apart and were actually making each other better.

The summer after 4th grade I moved to California. I last saw Dave the summer after 6th grade when we visited my grandmother.

I was looking through Facebook awhile back and found a couple of  Perkins fellows from Pueblo so I messaged one and asked if he might be related to Dave, and it turned out he was Dave's son. Long story short, Dave quarterbacked his high school football team to the state championship when he was a sophomore. He also wrestled and played baseball. I often wondered how different my life would have been had I stayed in Pueblo - turns out probably not so different as Dave and I would have been pushing each other in the same three sports and in life. The "now" when I was in Pueblo had a large influence on my life.

It has been my observation that those who live in the now tend to be happier by nature than those who live in the past - and that makes perfect sense to me. The past is yesterday and yesterday's gone. You cannot relive the past as that time has passed you by. You can learn from the past and not repeat your mistakes or you can repeat those mistakes while expecting a different outcome from the same effort. 

For a while after my wife Lynn's passing I spent some time mired in the past. I tried to see a different outcome for us but the Huntington's Disease that snatched her away from me was in total control and eventually I realized I had done everything I could in the circumstances as presented. Mistakes made would remain mistakes forever and successes the same. All that is left is a degree of loneliness that will probably never go away.

The now taught me to plan for the future, so as to not be totally blindsided events in the future. I frankly played a dumb jock act for most of my life primarily because of shyness but I learned it could be beneficial. I could quietly observe things around me and make better decisions along the way. I believe I surprised more people along the way with what I could or could not accomplish and people rarely underestimated me more than once. I have always been more interested in popular culture than the so-called classics. It is my firm belief the "classics" were simply the popular culture chronicles of their time.

My quest for spiritual strength has not been  completed. It is still summed up by U2's Still Haven't found What I'm Looking For. But the universe  has a balance I constantly try to identify. My late friend Pete Dintino used to tell me I was one of the most spiritual people he knew. Pete had cancer and we had many phone conversations about spirituality and God. Phone conversations that typically began around 3AM when Pete would call and say he needed a few minutes of my time. That usually got me banished to the living room so Lynn could sleep.

So to summarize - 71 years of living in the now has made me a pretty decent guy, well read,  still inquisitive, and ready to learn. Live for Today. That is my quick shack take on this week's blog topic. Be sure to check the other seven bloggers and see what they have to say.

Ramana

Maria

Sanjana

Srinivas

Conrad

Padmun & Raju

Songs with lyrics quoted

Changes in Latitudes Changes in Attitudes

Yesterdays Gone

Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Live for today