The Problem of Presence - No. 54
The thinking and way of life in our modern world has evolved to such a place that we have lost the ability to live in the present. Most of the time we are living in the past or living in the future. Our calendars pull us and orient most parts of our days, weeks, and months towards things that are yet to come. In the back of our minds, we have that meeting, trip, or event that we must prepare for. So much to do and so little time. Simultaneously, our unhealed wounds and unreconciled stories become bags we carry with us wherever we go. When we are preparing for those future events on our calendar, we find the voice of the past speaking to us. Remember when you lost, failed, were let down, made a fool of, or didn’t have enough. So we respond to the unresolved narratives of our past with a commitment to overcome them by proving that we are worthy, that we do have what it takes, and that we are not what we fear we might be.
Living in the past
We live in the past by carrying around fears, insecurities, shame, broken patterns of thinking, and burdensome narratives. We all have them until we find healing, but our culture has never learned how we heal. Without wise men and women, sages, mentors, and spiritual guides, we are not taught the path to restoration. We end up stuck in the bondage of our age, hiding in hurry and noise from our insecurities, fears, and doubts. Our rational approach to life has precluded the spiritual path to freedom and identity. As a result, we are perpetually stuck living the present through the lens of the past with our hearts set on the future.
Living in the future
Our culture is obsessed with the future. Most of the modern world does not truly value the present. We act like we do as we celebrate the hedonic treadmill of self-gratification and self-obsession. That path, however, is not presence, it is the constant pursuit of some feeling that promises fulfillment and then leaves us empty-hearted once again. Even those who are not trapped in the treadmill of self-pursuit find themselves relentlessly pulled by the undertow of a hurried culture that demands all of our life energy in exchange for a place in society. There are few places and groups in our modern world that know how to live in the present. So together we hurry on towards a series of moments in the future and then fail to be present for them as we are rushed on to the next thing that demands our attention.
The problem of presence
We are only ever truly in the present. We cannot really live in the future or in the past. We must live in the present or not live at all. God must be outside of time and capable of inhabiting the past and the present, but we aren’t, so the moments we are in right now are the only moments where we can actually encounter God. Everything we truly care about that has any lasting meaning is cultivated through presence. Unless we become people who can live in the moments we find ourselves in each and every day, then we are not actually present for our own lives.
What does it mean if we can’t be present for our own lives? Perhaps we have not yet really learned who we are and how we were created to live.
- John Walt
