Living in the present is key to happiness

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

JAKARTA (JP): A friend of mine recently complained about feeling trapped in his present job. He apparently doesn't like the job, yet he doesn't have the courage to leave to start doing what he really likes.

Sound familiar? Recognize the repulsive feeling of knowing that we have a choice yet feeling too paralyzed to make the choice that we really want? Has the word "future" become a some kind of slave driver or bogeyman to us, the human race? We never heard our parents advising us to "study hard, child, for the present." No, it was always, "study hard for your future." And in turn they would tell us that they worked hard to save enough money for the family's future. We, the human race, largely live either in the past or in the future, but rarely in the present.

What drives us to be so future-minded? Cravings for security.

Don't we sometimes envy lesser animals? Like us, they suffer and die, but they do not seem to make a "great song and dance" of it. They eat when they are hungry and sleep when they are tired, and instinct, rather than anxiety, seems to govern their few preparations for the future. As far as we can judge, they seem so preoccupied with what they are doing at the moment that they never stop to ask whether life has a meaning or a future. For the animals, happiness consists of enjoying life in the immediate present -- not in the assurance that the future is filled with joy.

Surely one of us will retort, "That is because they are creatures that are not as developed as humans. We are superior creatures with a much more sophisticated brain." And of course there is much truth to it. Despite their acute senses, animals have, however, a somewhat insensitive brain.

The advanced evolution of the human brain has unquestionably added immeasurably to the richness of life. Yet for this we pay dearly, because the increased overall sensitivity makes us, unfortunately, vulnerable. We are capable of intense pleasure and intense pain. We can't have one without the other. And our brains learns so quickly only to diminish the once intense pleasure to just another ordinary unexciting thing of life. So our brains compel us to seek more heightened, intense pleasure, and like drugs, the increase will eventually either harden the senses, or turn into pain.

Surely we are all aware of material gains; those big salary increases, fancy cars and bigger houses which only give us pleasure in the short term. When our senses become hardened, we just take them for granted. That is what I am supposed to have. And life will never be the same again, your standard of pleasure has been heightened and you can only go higher.

It's the same with the more we love someone and enjoy their company, the more pain we feel when we lose them.

Our brain is then, perhaps, a blessing and a curse at the same time. It stores for us all the memories of the past; the ones we cherish and the ones we wish to forget; the ones that cause us so much pain. It equips us with the ability of survival and adaptation to life; of making an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, planning for and predicting future events. Together with this, come the worries, guilt, regrets, anxieties, resentment and expectation. The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been "cleared up" and the future is bright with promise.

This is a typical human problem. We are forever condemned to reasoning. Unwilling to tolerate life's ambiguity, its unresolvability, its inevitability, like Siddharta in Herman Hesse's lyrical novel, title?, we all the time search for certainty, something tangible to hold on to. Like Siddharta, we cried: surely there is more to life. It can't be just what it appears to be, that there are no hidden meanings, that this it, just this and nothing more! How can we possibly bear a life as plain as it is, without reassurance, without being special, without even being offered some comforting explanations? So our mind works for meaning, day in day out.

We seem to be oblivious that the future never makes sense unless it will one day become the present. What is the point of worrying about what we are going to eat next week when we can't enjoy the meals we've been worrying about when next week becomes present? Our brain seems to be obsessed by constantly searching for new objects of dread that aren't here now. It makes us like an ass chasing a piece of carrot hung in front of its nose.

A Zen student asked his master, "What is the secret of enlightenment?" The master answered, "Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired." Who will ever think that the animals' way is a way of enlightenment? A meditative life style is "the animals' way of living; "aware, engaged and present." Our "security" lies in the present, not in the distant future or in the dim past. We don't need a reason to be happy. We don't need to dig into the past or analyze the future. The past is history, the future is a mystery and the present is a gift; that's why it is called "the present."

And besides, there is no such thing as security. Nothing is permanent; everything is transient, fluid, moving, flowing. To cling to the idea of security is like the ass that, through his ignorance, keeps chasing for eternity a piece of carrot hung in front of its nose. Only by embracing external insecurity we can become internally secure. Ultimately, the satori (enlightenment) is not something that can be achieved by working at it; by desiring or searching for it. It comes to those who dispose themselves to receive it. This is what the Christian doctrine that salvation is the effect of both grace and good works means. As Siddharta finally found out, the only times that we can have what we longed for are those moments when we stop grasping for it. Chuang Tzu once said, "To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders."

And the beauty of it all is, by realizing the virtue of living in the present, my friend perhaps would no more feel the need to leave his job. This is the wisdom of insecurity.