Thursday Thoughts...

"If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present". 

Lao Tzu

I oftentimes read a quote like this and something clicks. Perhaps it is that I respond to simple theories and categorisations; or perhaps it because somebody has captured the essence of something, from which we can build.

When I first read this, I wondered how accurate it could be, and I tried to analyse it. I think like many truisms or simple statements it can hold up; yet can also be challenged.

The last part about being at peace if you are living in the present, seems to be strongly linked to mindfulness approaches and that being present is all that we really can be. That this moment is really all that we have.  I pondered how this is oftentimes true; if we are here in the now, then the past and the future are not affecting us, along with the burdens and or gifts that they carry.

However; of course, for many folk right here and right now is the fearful place. It is the place of bombing, of sirens, of burning; the place of great sadness or of anger. The present is not always peaceful; nor are we sure to be at peace if we are present. But broadly speaking it holds in the general spirit of things I think.

Living in the future and being anxious was a good way for me to think about it as well; because for me anxiety is nearly always about something that is out there, to be done, to be faced, to await. Anxiety for me seems to be linked to waiting for something to happen and wondering how awful it will be; or assuming that a moment in the future will be stressful. Or simply that the future itself is stressful. Which at the moment it kind of is.

And the first/final notion of being depressed being linked to living in the past was also a simple descriptor which got me thinking. I am fortunate to not have lived experience of any serious or lengthy depressions. I have had sadness and grief and dark times and I wonder how much of that is about regret, or loss of things from the past. Death and grief lead you to be sad for the loss of relationships that you had; but I am not sure I am qualified to interrogate this notion too closely.  There is however, something in this notion that has a ring of small truth to it, for me.

A friend recently sent this photo of the lands near our cottage in Scotland. I look a this and I can breathe. The air, the empty spaces, the long long vistas... a place to feel present.