I was puttering around, minding my own business.  I trolled through my Bloglines feed and pulled up Tech’s 51313 Harbor Street.  I’m behind on reading.  I was out of town over the weekend, but in the back of my mind, I knew he’d written two new posts in the last week titled “Belief” and “Faith.”  I hadn’t read them yet, but when he posted “Friendship” today and talked about Gail and the wonderful friend she’d been for him through the years, calling attention to her comment on his “Belief” post, I was doing some scrambling to catch up.

Please read the whole post and comment here, but this is what slapped me upside the head and prompted this post:

No one’s life turns out just like they thought it would, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good life. And there are so many conditions of happiness available in the right here and now. You don’t have to run to the future to find them. Don’t sacrifice the present for the future or by getting stuck in the past. The present is all we really have and we need to make the most of it.

See, I spent much of my teen years longing for The Future.  Things would be so much better then.  That’s when things would really happen.  (Yes, they did, but how much did I squander?) Thankfully, I’m not too big on being stuck in The Past.  Sure, I wonder what it would have been like to finish college where I began in a traditional way, but that wasn’t going to happen for me.  Mostly because of my attitude.  My attitude has been a problem most of my life, but I’ve managed to be moderately successful (by my definition) in spite of it.  In fact, my problem may be that I think I’ve forgotten more of my past than I ever knew.  Does that mean I can make stuff up now?

But seriously.  My hubby spent four years in the Air Force more than fifty years ago, and he constantly reminisces about things that happened to him and things he did back then.  I spent twenty-eight years in the Air Force, and I haven’t found much reason to remember too many stories from that time of my life, which, incidentally, comprises my entire adult life except for the last year and a half, plus the year I spent at Ohio State and the nearly a year I spent making toy drums in Massachusetts before entering the Air Force (three and a three-quarter years, if you’re keeping track at home).

I doubt too many people are too interested in the Ohio State Traying Team (using dining hall trays do slide down snowbanks) or stretching our phone handset cords to the doors of our room and talking face to face to our suitemates (in the age of cell phones, isn’t that quaint?).  Ditto for slicing my right index finger with a piece of sheet metal at the drum factory or hauling the porta-potty in to work to dump it because I didn’t have indoor plumbing for several months while I embraced the joys of living in a cabin in the woods while earning minimum wage making toy drums.  Yeah, I’ve laughed about those days, but I doubt too many people are interested, and, frankly, other than making sure I remember how tough it can be to make ends meet, I’m not wild about reliving those days.

The Future still entices me, even though I’m not certain how exciting it will be.  It holds fascinating possibilities, but my challenge is to live in The Present, which brings me to why Gail’s quote inspired me.

It’s probably nothing to you, but until I read Gail’s comment, I had never superimposed the meaning of the words “present” and “present.”  One word means “the here and now” and the other means “a gift.”  Then I realized The Present is a present we open anew every single day of our lives.  What we do with that present makes all the difference.  You can’t save it.  It’s perishable.

What are you going to do with your Present when you roll out of bed tomorrow morning?  And the morning after that?  It’s precious and special.  Just for you.  Enjoy it.