The TAO in Anything and Everything

<b>The TAO in Anything and Everything</b>
Get the TAO wisdom to live in reality with balance and harmony in every aspect of life.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Tomorrow Is Another Day


Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind said at the end of the movie: “Tomorrow is another day.”
                      
As a parent, you may want to make plans for you children. But the most important thing is to enjoy them. There is so much enjoyment teaching them everything, such as how to read.

Yes, tomorrow is another day, but that day may or may never come. Fortunately or unfortunately, we always choose to believe that it will come. Fortunately in that it may give us hope and expectation; unfortunately in that it may divorce ourselves from the realities of life, making us less grateful of the present or less thankful of what we already have.


But living in the now is exemplary of the consciousness of being. Today is now, and mindfulness of the present is realization not only that tomorrow is another day but also that it might never come. This mental consciousness may make you aware that you are precious and unique because now you have become fully awake. Living in the now means asking yourself mind-searching questions: What do I need to know now? What do I need to love now? What do I need to be grateful for now? In short, today provides the compass and road map for your life journey, which might abruptly end tomorrow.  


Living in the now is easier said than done because the human mind has a tendency to focus on the past or to project itself into the future, but seldom stays in the present.


Our actions or inactions are derived and driven by our thoughts and memories of our past experiences. If those experiences were negative, our conscious and subconscious mind will tell us to avoid them in the future; on the other hand, if they are positive, they tend to instruct us to repeat them in the future. Accordingly, the human mind will constantly shuffle between the past and the future. As a result, it seldom stays in the present moment. To illustrate, while talking on the cell phone, how often do we talk about what happened or what we are going to do next? If we think more deeply, the subject of our conversation mostly involves mostly the past or the future. In a worse scenario, many of us are talking or texting while driving, in other words, our mental focus is certainly not on the now—which is driving our car.


Mindfulness is your purposeful attention to the present moment. This purposeful attention enables you to recognize your thoughts as they occur, but without paying judgmental attention to them; in other words, they neither distract nor disturb you, and you just observe them objectively, like watching a movie about yourself unfolding before your very eyes.


To train your mind to focus more on the present, concentrate on your breathing. Most of us are totally unaware of our breaths, unless we are short of breath after running or climbing stairs, or due to some medical conditions. Concentration on how you breathe in and breathe out, as well as your body’s sensations during the inhalation and exhalation trains you to develop mindfulness. Understand that your body is yours only, and it is always with you. Finding the moment-by-moment relationship with your body through your breathing is your pathway to wellness of the body, the mind, and the soul.

According to the TAO, always live in the now, and tomorrow is just another day yet to come.




Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau


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