Can I Always Be “Present?” – Thoughts About Being In the “NOW”

When I first read “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, my first thought was “How can I always be in the now, and still have things to work toward?”  It seems like goals are always in the future, so it would seem at first glance that Mr. Tolle would have us believe that we shouldn’t have goals. This thought scared me until I discovered that when I was in the present, I still had goals as much as I did when I wasn’t in the present.  When I am in the present, however, my perception of my goals is very different.

Explaining the difference in my perception of my goals in the present perspective versus the future perspective is very difficult. In a way, while in the present, I feel detached from my goals. It feels almost as if they might belong to someone else.  In this state, I no longer feel intense pressure to accomplish the end result of the goals, but feel the reason to accomplish the small piece that I am working on right now.  While I am in focused on the future, however, I feel the overwhelming pressure of the whole goal stacked up against the miniscule piece that I can accomplish right now. 

After realizing this I have come the conclusion that you can live your life in the “NOW” all of the time.   You can draw on your past and ideas for the future, but in the end both the past and future are just there to give you a plethora of possibilities that you can draw upon to live life now.