Living for today

The world is an ever changing, always progressing place with the emphasis on the future and rarely on the present. You’re told that everything thing you do now has an effect on the future which I suppose in some way it does but what happens if you are someone that likes to live in the now. What happens if you take a look at everything and you realise that when you die everything and I mean everything is for naught. Once you die, it matters not how many qualifications you have, or how much money you have in the bank, or your criminal record or how many friends or enemies you made while living. If you aren’t conscious or aware to see or even feel the consequences of your actions while living then why are we constantly being told, “You must do this otherwise you’ll have problems in the future” or “Save up your money” or “There’ll be plenty of time for that later in life”?

People are constantly looking at Tomorrow, the mindset being ‘Your actions of today affect what you do tomorrow’ and it is just about consequences but what happens if like me you don’t care about Tomorrow because you know that death erases everything that you have done and just want to focus on Today.

 I wander in life doing things that please me today, some may cry “Oh what a careless attitude!” and “Oh silly boy, don’t you you care about your future?” but truth is this attitude I’ve taken isn’t really so careless at all, I know that Death erases all, so why not do things I enjoy right now rather than things I don’t like.

I’m reminded by an Aesop Fable about the Ant who worked hard all summer gathering food to store for the winter while the Grasshopper just relaxed, sung and had fun and did whatever he could. Of course we know the ending to that story, winter came, Grasshopper went hungry, Ant shared the food he had gathered and collected and scolded Grasshopper for not preparing.

Now you might think that the moral of the story is that you should work now in order to prepare for the future and maybe that’s how you perceive it but the thing is what if during winter they both died? Ant was so busy looking towards the future and collecting but if Ant died, what happens to the food he collected? He can’t take it with him, it was all a waste, whereas Grasshopper could have been slightly aware that we could all die right now, why worry about the future when Today could be your last day?

But that’s the thing, in this world due to the way society and things are structured there is no room for living in the now. Everything you do has to be for something in the future, your school days you have to work to get good qualifications to enable you to get a good job. But even then you are working to pay pay off whatever bills and taxes you have, to pay for your pension, and I have to ask myself…why?

Why do I have to worry about the future, why can’t I do what I like now? We have just the one life, why can’t I do things that please me right now? “Oh but you’ll have plenty of time for that later” were words that constantly spewing from my mothers mouth every time she saw me enjoying myself via video games, card games, football or whatever, “Work now, play later” despite the truth of it is that there won’t be any time to play later, there will always be something that I have to work for.

I always said to myself when I was younger that living in the ‘now’ is exactly what I shall do. I will do what pleases me and when things get tricky, when things get all “You can’t do that because you don’t have qualifications”, “REJECTED! NOT. ENOUGH. MONEY” or “Blah blah blah legal technical terms, bills bills bills, due notice” and all that I’d just simply kill myself because what's the point of dealing with all of that, struggling for what? A few pennies just to get by until the next one comes? No thanks, Death erases all.

Finally, the problem with this society and its ever “progressing” nature  is that it forces you to catch up. It forces you to keep moving. What do I mean by this? Well the truly content are just that. Happy with every thing in their life and when you’re happy with conditions and such why would you want to change? But the thing is society can never keep still long enough for you to be ‘there’. It forces you to ‘need’ stuff.

• I don’t ‘want’ a new phone but I’m forced to get one because it’s the only way to contact people and that costs money.
• I don’t ‘want’ a laptop but I’m forced to get one because people want things typed up and a laptop is one of the few ways to get things typed up.
• I don’t ‘want’ an internet connection but I’m forced to because people what to sent emails and you must have email addresses to apply for some jobs.
• I don’t ‘want’ a new suit with a tie and all that but I’m forced to because you are judged by appearance in interviews for jobs and other things.

…and so on.

So how do you get all this? Money, yes money. If you don’t have it, you need to get it and how do you get it? By working for it, by stealing it, by receiving it, by borrowing it and if you don’t have it you cannot catch up with the rest of society, it will leave you behind. They don’t care about you, there are plenty of other suckers who they can suck the money out of.

You have children, then you need to buy them food, you need to buy nappies, you need to buy stuff for them and if you don’t then it is considered abuse.

You have a job, then you need some form of transport and if it is a car or public transport then you need money for petrol and tickets and then when the price inevitably increases you need to work out a way of affording the extra costs which may require and change in lifestyle, all so that you can keep up or risk getting left behind.

Playing keep up with society is an expensive game, one that I would like to have no more part in, unfortunately society will not let me do just that and so I continue wandering and living in the now, never really worrying about the future but I know that it could all end one day.