Concept
Here and Now
Living in the here and now means treating each moment of your life as complete in itself, rather than as a provisional step toward some future point where real life is supposed to begin.
Many of us quietly postpone life. It will start after the promotion, the wedding or the paid-off loan. Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, drawing on Alfred Adler, take this assumption apart. If life is a line toward a summit, everything before the summit is provisional, and the summit keeps moving. They borrow a distinction from Aristotle. Some activities count only once finished, like a journey judged by arrival. Others are complete at every moment, like a dance. Nobody dances to reach a particular spot on the floor. Living in the here and now means treating life as the second kind, with a spotlight on today so the past and future fade into the background. It is not a ban on plans. You can still aim somewhere. The difference is that today stops being a down payment on a life that hasn't started yet.
A real-life example
Dana, 34, is saving for a flat. She has decided that her choir, weekend trips and long dinners with friends can wait until the keys are in her hand. Two years in, prices have climbed and so has her resentment. She keeps the savings plan but drops the waiting. Thursday evenings go back to choir, and she stops describing this year as "just getting through." The balance grows no faster, but the weeks no longer feel like a waiting room.
How to use it
- 1Finish the sentence "My life will really start when…" on paper, then list what you've been postponing until that day.
- 2Pick one item from that list you could do this week without abandoning your goal, and put it in your calendar.
- 3When you catch yourself calling a period of your life "temporary," ask what this moment would look like if it counted on its own.