You have never once lived anywhere but here and now. The past exists only as memory arising in the present, and the future only as expectation arising in the present. Time is something the mind experiences, not a place you can travel to.
Consider how strange it is that no matter how far you wander in thought, you always arrive back at the same place. Here. Now. You may spend an entire morning in yesterday's conversation or tomorrow's worry, but the wandering itself happens here, in this moment, the only moment there is. The present is not one place among many. It is the single ground on which everything stands.
The mind does not like this. It lives in time the way a fish lives in water. It reaches back for memories and forward for plans, and it calls that reaching a life. But look closely at a memory and you will find it is a thought occurring now. Look closely at the future and you will find it is an image occurring now. The past is already gone the instant a thought names it. The wind on your face has passed by the time the mind says "wind on my face." We are always slightly behind ourselves, living in an echo, unless we come all the way into the present.
A child knows this without knowing it. Ask a child to wait one more minute and the minute is either an eternity or nothing at all, because the child is not measuring, only living. To the mind, a minute is a quantity. To life, it is a single step, and that step is all there is. No step exists before the one being taken, and no step comes after it. Everything else is memory or expectation, dust in the wind.
This is not a reason for sadness. When you truly feel how temporary everything is, how each moment is created and destroyed at once like the crest of a wave becoming its own trough, you are not unmoored by it. You are anchored. The passing nature of things presses you firmly into the only thing that is real. There is nothing to grasp, because grasping reaches for a moment already gone. There is only this page of the book of your life, open now, and the quiet invitation to read it before turning to the next.
What could be more perfect than the moment that is here right now, whatever it happens to hold?
Questions that arise
What does living in the present moment actually mean?
It means meeting life as it is, here and now, rather than through memories of the past or expectations of the future. Those only ever arise in the present anyway.
Why is the present moment considered so important?
Because it is the only place anything real occurs. The past and future exist as thoughts, not as somewhere you can live. Everything you have ever experienced happened now.
If I plan for the future, am I leaving the present?
Not necessarily. Thinking about the future can happen with full presence. What causes suffering is living in the future, deriving your sense of self from a moment that does not exist.
How does remembering that everything is temporary help?
It loosens the grip of grasping and worry, and it returns your attention to what is actually here. Realizing the passing nature of things anchors you in the present rather than unsettling you.
These contemplations are drawn from A Year of Stillness by Jussi Niittyviita, a year of ordinary days observed in the light of awareness. More of his books, audiobooks, and courses are at www.jussiniittyviita.com.