Living in the Moment or Destroying a Pee Chee Folder?

We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. ~ Anias Nin

Thinking has always been my problem.  I spend most of my time thinking and very little of my time being.  And it is my intention to change that.

Though it is not easy, nothing is more worth the effort.

It is our ego that makes us think.  And those thoughts are the stories the ego tells in order to control our lives; to keep us unhappy.

Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists.  Herein lies the Peace of God. ~ A Course in Miracles

Basically it means that the only reality is love and everything else doesn’t matter because it doesn’t exist.  The reason we think it exists is because we, our ego, makes it real.

My example of this is the old Pee Chee folders we had when I was in school.  They were tan or yellow folders made from card stock.  Each had two internal pockets and they were printed on the outside with drawings of sports and on the inside pockets with all kinds of cool stuff like metric conversion and multiplication tables.  They were inexpensive and held our loose-leaf papers for class.

I hated them.  They made my skin crawl at the thought of them.  Still today, even as I write this, my shoulders are getting tense as I recall them.  I can envision them on the lower shelf in the back-to-school aisle.  There were what seemed like thousands of them strewn about the lower shelf and we had to get six or seven; one for each class.

Hang on a sec, I have to breathe away some tension…

OK.  Thanks.  See, I still carry with me the thoughts I had from my school days.  I hated most of my classes.  The Pee Chee especially reminds me of algebra class.  I despised algebra.  It’s not that I’m that dumb, but, with all due respect to my teacher(s), I do not recall ever being told how the knowledge of algebra would help me in my life.  You may know, but no one ever told me.

On the first day of 9^th grade, our teacher called roll and then turned on his overhead projector.  He did not turn it off again, nor leave its side until school was out that summer.  He just began, “Let’s solve for X…” Then he launched into calculations and symbols and God knows what.  I was lost from the instant class began, until the end of the school year.  I had no idea what the string of letters and numbers meant, nor for them could I understand any point of reference.

I’d watch the clock each day in third period and would find myself focused on the second hand.  It would move two ticks forward, normally two seconds in the real world, but each tick taking ten seconds of my life in that algebra class.  Then, once in awhile it would just pause for a minute or two, or even seem to tock backwards.

The only thing I had besides staring at the clock was doodling and otherwise defacing the pictures on my Pee Chee folder.

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It was a never-ending agony, day-after-day, class-after-class and tick-after-tock.  My teacher would stand next to that blasted overhead projector and speak in another language and scroll and erase the transparent sheet and write in black-grease-pencil gibberish and I sat there as my life dripped away into a puddle on the floor to be mopped away forever by the great janitor in the sky.

And all of that comes back with every thought of a Pee Chee folder.

Yet, it is only some printed card stock, folded and pressed into a tool for students of the late 20^th Century.  It is just card stock!  It is I who places upon it all of that meaning.  It is my ego.  It is that same ego that overlays stories on every aspect of our lives.

When we are thinking of the past, we aren’t really thinking of that past as it really was.  We are remembering our stories about that past; the stories our ego has overlaid upon that past.

When we think of the future, we are only thinking of our fears of the future.  That is our ego, as well.

And, quickly here, if you say to me that you are thinking of the future with hope, I remind you of one aspect of Buddhist philosophy which points out to us that if we are hoping for a specific outcome, then we are also hoping against another possible outcome.

Check it out for yourself.  Imagine something for which you are hoping.  Now, look inside yourself and see if there is something against which you hope; some outcome you dread or hope against.

Again, it’s the ego which creates all of this for us; all of the drama and fear.

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One of the secrets to happiness is to stop thinking of the past and the future, and focus on now.  And not to really think about now, but to just experience it.  Be aware of what you are doing, where you are, with whom you are spending this time.

One way you can begin is by sensing the temperature of the air.  How does it feel on your skin?  Are you in the sun or the shade?  Are you standing?  Walking?  Sitting in a favorite chair?  Are you drinking coffee from a favorite cup?  Are you aware of the cup and the texture and the temperature of it, or are you remembering when you got the cup and who you were with or who gave it to you or what argument you had with someone one time when you were drinking coffee?  That is an example of how easy it is to drift from the moment you are in and find your ego filling you with stories about the past or fears of the future.

Once you notice your surroundings, take time to appreciate the simplicity of the situation.  Find something for which you are grateful.  Appreciate the experience you are having right at that moment.

It has been difficult for me to stay in the moment.  But I think it is difficult because therein lies a treasure worth more than money.  And sharing these thoughts with you is helping me focus.

Thank you.