The Spiritual Journey, According to Jesus, Part 3

The spiritual journey leads us to live increasingly in the present moment, and decreasingly in the future or the past. 

Throughout my life I have struggled to live in the present. I am a planner. I like to look ahead and figure out the future. I am an evaluator. I like to look back and decipher what went right and what went wrong in the past. When I start thinking, my natural reaction is to dwell in the past or in the future.

I find the following words of Jesus to be insightful, from Matthew 6:33-34: 

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Yet the usual pattern of my thoughts is to keep replaying the videos of bad things that have happened in the past. Yes, I need to grieve past losses and work through the emotions. I need to learn the lessons of the past. But at some point, those videos will only stop playing when I decide to leave them in the past.

Future anxiety comes when I have a really hard day or week, and start imagining what would happen if every day, or every week, ends up being exactly like that one I just experienced! I allow the present to be ruined by a future that may not ever happen.

A few years ago, Joe Maddon, when he was the Manager of my beloved Chicago Cubs baseball team, was talking in a post-game press conference during a difficult moment. The team had just lost three out of four games in one series to their rival Milwaukee Brewers. Those losses were detrimental to the Cubs’ playoff aspirations. Amid a lot of negative energy, Joe said: 

There is only one way to deal with moments like these and that’s in the moment. Anxiety lives in the future. You have to stay right here, right now. Things can change just as quickly. 

He was talking about baseball, but we see the same in the bigger issues of life. When anxiety overruns us, it is usually when we are focused on the future or the past, instead of living fully in the moment.