Importance of Now

Live in the moment...

“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well,” wrote famous American novelist and short story writer George RR Martin in his epic novel A Game of Thrones.

This is a wonderful yet amazingly true fact. Yet, some children do not realise this.

I have noticed majority of the children yearn to grow older, very soon. They wish to wake up the next morning to find themselves going out for work. But they have probably not yet realised the importance of childhood and its sweet memories.

When my friends and I were much younger, we used to take inspiration from our seniors and aspire to become seniors one day. Now that we have reached higher grade, and the younger students in our school refer to us as their seniors, we yet again wish to become junior and live the carefree life once again.

I have always found it a bit weird that where children want to turn into an adult sooner, an adult wants to head back to his golden age of innocence. Children wish to turn adults soon so that they can control their own lives, while adults wish to go back to their childhood era to be bound in the care and affection of their parents. 

Children want to skip education and examinations, while adults wish to go back to those times to escape from the tension of work.

The concept has often perplexed me that younger children dream about their future while the adults dwell in their past. I wonder why we do not live and enjoy the present so that when we look at our past later, we might find sweet memories and try to enjoy and work hard in the present so our future could become better than our present.

And I’m reminded of HW Longfellow’s poem “A Psalm of Life.” The poet says: 
“Trust no future, however pleasant! 
Let the dead Past bury its dead! 
Act, - act in the living Present! 
Heart within, and God o’erhead.”

(Published in The Gulf Today on May 14, 2016)