Living In The Moment, or Reclaiming Phrases

Why do we feel the need to live in anything other than the here and now? Perhaps it has something to do with a sense of not having what we want in our lives at the moment: a boy, a girl, a job, a friend, a possession, that makes us think about things that are different than what we have at the moment. When you really stop to look at the world around you, right at this very moment, it beautiful. Just looking at the way the sky looks through the leaves of a tree at sunrise, how the song that you have on collides with that image and perfects the moment, echoing the beauty and adding to it. Or perhaps its the way the trees look at night (I'm a tree person), seemingly black silhouettes against the inky blue of the sky at the period of time between dusk and night. Just stopping to look, truly look at these little things will give you the most amazing feeling in the world, if you can put everything else away for just a few moments. I find it very difficult to do this, to stop thinking about what happened at work, or might happen tomorrow, next week, next year. Especially since I spend the majority of my time creating or living in imaginary worlds, it is difficult to be completely and wholly in this one. Being in that moment is truly magical. And being present in the here and now is the ultimate achievement for an actor. As an actor I have heard the phrase "In the moment" so often, and often so ridiculously said, which an over exaggeration of all the vowels in the word moment, that I hate the phrase and often find myself awarding less credibility to persons I hear saying it often. But putting aside all past experiences with this phrase to be truly in the moment is an amazing feeling, both onstage, and off. Being truly in the moment in real life is perhaps even more important than when you achieve it and you are not in real life. (I include everyone, not just actors in this idea). Obviously we can't all just sit around and revel in every momentary atmospheric condition, no matter how fun it is, all the time. Whenever we get the chance, however, we should try it. It can be quite a strange feeling, truthfully, realizing how fleeting time is, how every second that happens is different than the one before, and the fact that we can never truly recreate that instant, but with the risk of feeling a bit strange, you take a soaring leap into the arms of the present, and gain better knowledge and appreciation of the world around you.