What's your choice: Should have been, Will be or Now?

I had a dream. I had a plan. I knew how my life was supposed to play out. It didn’t happen. A funny thing happened on the way to living the life I was suppose to live, I began to live the life I was in. This realizing didn’t come right away; perhaps it has taken until now to fully appreciate the meaning of Now. Now is life as it is, not as it Should Have Been or as it Will Be. Those are lives that don’t exist and actually will never exist because I can’t go backwards and when I get to the future it will be tainted by all the unknown experiences that will occur between now and then. I have fully experienced living my life in the Should Have Been or Will Be frame of mind.

The Should Have Been perspective is full of negative emotions: judgment, criticism, blame, frustration, grudges, betrayal, and loss. It also holds excuses of unmet potential and opportunity just within reach. It is a cowardly way to live. Not long ago, my husband was reflecting back on a very difficult time in our life that required great loss, unplanned transitions and even greater character. Before I took a moment to censure my thoughts, rapidly, off my tongue flew the accusation of “That’s when my life was ruined”. No sooner had it left my lips did I know it wasn't a true perspective. Not for my husband, he offered a smallish, knowing smirk. Not for a listening friend, she had been there and knew my pain. But for me, in my heart, I knew the reaction was coming out of old emotional energy not from the place I stood in the Now. Now, I could embrace that the lessons learned were worth the pain. Now, I could see what needed to be worked out in me as a result of that time in life. Now, held gratitude for the pain and loss on an even scale with healing and growth. Now, knew that the me that was present was the result of not a ruined life but a life challenged and redeemed. Living in a Should Have Been position about life does nothing to validate who you are rather, with very little effort, it reduces our pain to nonsense. May our pain in this world never be for not.

The Will Be perspective, optimistic illusion when projecting forward, holds negative energy and regard for the present Now. It also holds negative emotion in the now of judgment, criticism, failure, frustration, condescension, and dismissal. It further implies that all we have done to get to now isn’t good enough. We are not enough. My home is a good example of a way I have lived in the Will Be perspective. Prior to the home I currently live in I lived in larger homes, with greater amenities and better space to entertain, something that gives me great joy. These other homes gave to my ego a sense of success and pride. The home I live in now was a landing place after the difficult season. It is functional, easy to maintain, proximal to our family life resources, fairly inexpensive and is an impressive carbon footprint for a family of four in today’s square footage laden suburban excess. But it doesn’t have the amenities, allow for entertaining or serve my pride. In a desperate effort to get back to what I thought was to be my life I have wished away time in this home, time in the Now, by constantly focusing my energy on the next house that Will Be. A year ago I let go of the home and centered myself in the Now. Not that there haven’t been moments of vacillating into Will Be but for the most part I decided to live in the Now. Guess what, my level of satisfaction greatly increased, evident in the fact that I hold the impressions I shared above about the positive, productive life that we live in this home. Evident in the fact that I no longer live for the Will Be.

The Should Have Been and Will Be remind me of a drive I took in Southern California headed to the beach for the weekend. While traveling down the highway I took the wrong exit for the toll way road and ended up taking a long detour back to the freeway. While driving the detour I was consumed with the thought of being lost and not getting to the road I intended to take. Shortly, a thought broke through the ruminating about how lost I was and how I was going to find my way back to the intended route. This thought reminded me that life is full of detours and if I were to spend time in the detours obsessing about where I was going or how to undo the detour, I would miss the beauty of the Now. As I left my head and reconnected with the moment I realized I was driving through the most beautiful rolling hills with the ocean just within my view. Surprisingly, not long after, that I came back upon the highway and continued on to my destination with little delay and a more peaceful feeling. The negative energy and emotion that I had spent on worrying about what I Should have done or what Will come gave no return on investment. At this point the thoughts revealed their complete and utter worthlessness. The detour had taught me a lesson; I was broader and deeper because of getting lost.

This is life, full of scenic detours in which we feel lost and find ourselves judging the past and wishing for tomorrow. In that, we miss what the Now holds. Detours, in the end, get us to our destination in a more complete way than if we had sped on through on the highway. Getting lost is essential to feeling found. Learning to trust the detours is the key to accepting the Should Have Been and releasing the Will Be. Now is the most scenic place, full of life, love, joy, because it is where we are. Now requires very little negative emotion because it is nearly impossible to judge the present. The present can only be judged through a lens of the past or a lens of the future. Letting go of Should Have Been and Will Be are nothing but a choice to be present in the Now, accept the detours in life and enjoy the beauty around us.

The Between

Sitting in the beauty of the garden with the sun setting, eating an amazing meal with a lovely glass of wine, the woman said, "I can't wait to get out of this prison." The person next to her was taken back, what did she mean, this was heaven on earth, what most people long for in their dreams. But for her, this destination came after the death of her dream and held all the healings and learnings of her pain. This place reminded her of who she was and who she hadn't yet become. This place was her Between.
In our journey of life we have times of change, times of transition and usually, just once, a great identity shift. Known in history and literature as the Hero's Journey, it is a designated process of losing who we thought we were, becoming someone new and then reentering the world. Sitting in the middle of an ending and a beginning, The Between holds the fragile task of metamorphosis. The cocoon where we become someone new.
Not a stranger to the place, I have often described this process as wearing a wet, wool sweater over a cold, naked body -terribly uncomfortable. It holds all the memory and all the hope, the dark nights and glimpses of dawn, who we no longer are and the doubts about who we are becoming. Much like a prison, it holds the grievance of our past and the uncertainty of our future. More than anything it carries a fragrance of yearning, to be done, complete, finished. Yet, in the end, when it is done, complete, finished, The Between remains the quiet whisper of what we are truly made of and what gave us wings to fly.

To read more about this incredible journey pick up: Cultural Creatives, by Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson