The other day I met an interesting guy while charging my car. He was frustrated about the lack of etiquette by another guy charging before him. I came up to him to chat, as he shared how long of a day he’d had. This man is witty, quick on his feet, and a great listener; I could totally see him being a stand-up comedian. Feeling bad for the guy, let’s call him M, I invited him to a local burger joint. He took me up on it.
So we shared. He had been left by his partner last year after devoting everything to him. Turned out the partner is a narcissist, possibly influenced by his traumatic past (I’ll spare you the depressing details). He could never completely recover from it and became a deeply insecure person. He was jealous of M’s good looks, perhaps even resentful. They got into fights over this.
But M could never leave him. He had set a goal to have a stable family by the age of 40. He got into this relationship as he was approaching his deadline, and tried to fit this relationship into his vision. He was well aware of his partner’s flaws, but his desire to be ‘done’ by 40 clouded his judgement. He didn’t want to leave his partner because he was afraid of failing his vision.
As I listened to M’s story, attentively mind you, a theory started boiling in my head. Perhaps the reason for M’s and his partner’s fallout was because they two of them were living at different points in time. M’s partner was stuck in his past, while M was too busy looking to the future. One failed to appreciate the present, and the other failed to acknowledge and resolve its problems.
It’d been a while since I philosophized about living in the present. This conversation made me appreciate living in the present more. Funny enough, it reminded me of a quote I put on the wall above my desk that I’d been ignoring. The quote is: Tomorrow never comes; it is always today. <Slow nod of enlightenment>.
It is always today.
Richard Anderson 