Sometimes it is Not Kind to Rewind

“Maybe we’ll meet at a bar. He’ll drive a funky car. Maybe we’ll meet at a club, and fall so deeply in love. He’ll tell me I’m the one and we’ll have so much fun. I’ll be the girl of his dreams … maybe.” – Janet Jackson

This past week or two I have found myself falling prey to the suffocating grip of past memories. Losing touch with the reality set out before me, I have found myself (more often than not) living in a world that once was and yet might have been. The cure to my psychological ailment you ask? The Now.

A half a year ago, my father was inspired to give me a book by the name of The Power of Now. Reading the bold print scrolled across the cover “#1 New York Times Bestseller,” I was skeptical before I even made it to the first page. However, a couple of chapters in I could not help but find myself completely enthralled and a smidgeon intrigued.

Written by a Vancouverite and spiritualist-extraordinaire, The Power of Now basically says (in a nutshell that does the book absolutely no justice) that all we have is the now. There is no past, there is no future there is just this moment. Think back to the scene in Unfaithful when the gorgeous Diane Lane pulls the book off the dreamy Olivier Martinez’s shelf and reads “Be Happy for this moment … this moment is your life.”

It is in the ‘now’ that Tolle argues, ever so eloquently and somewhat aggressively, we can find the key to enlightenment, inner peace and eternal joy. Not such a bad deal if you ask me! By bringing oneself directly into the present, the author reasons that a person can free themselves from the emotions and thoughts that bind them to a painful past.

Needless to say, in my endless abuse of quick fixes I have been all about the ‘now’ these last couple of days. Focusing myself somewhat relentlessly on the mundaneness of every second that ticks by and breath that exhales out, I have been doing everything in my power to keep from slipping back under the heavy water of days gone past. However, I have found myself questioning: what do you do in the times when the present is less favourable than the past?

Something tells me the enlightened West Coast Canuck has never lived in a climate that drops below zero for half the year. Yesterday morning when I was getting ready for work, I made a conscious effort to be in the now and chanted the book’s title while bundling my winter clothes. But as soon I opened the door to leave, I screwed my mantra after the first rush of icy air emblazed my cheeks with the colour red. Because at that frigid moment I figured that even though my memories hurt, the past was still much warmer than the present.

In this life, there are definitely certain moments that I have lived in more than others. I can recall each of them visually as if they were captured in 300 dpi. I can zoom in on the square inch of a touch until it is so big I don’t recognize the person giving it. I can hear the sounds behind a kiss as if they were being played back on 5.1 surround. I can playback the then as if it happened now – it’s just that sometimes I have trouble pressing stop.