Sufficient for Each Day

It’s not tomorrow
You need to worry about.
Today is enough.

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We spend so much time fretting about what may happen. Yet we should spend our time dealing with what is happening.

Real mindfulness will make us aware of the whole picture, allowing us to deal with our trials. But real mindfulness will also help us to know that the worries of tomorrow have not happened, yet; and maybe they never will. Therefore, why worry about them.

Now, that’s not to say that if we have an engagement of some sort, tomorrow, we do not prepare for it. However, worrying about it, to the exclusion of today’s issues, is unnecessary. In fact, it could be said that if we are worrying about tomorrow’s issues, rather than today’s, we are procrastinating. We are putting today’s concerns off in favour of the far more “pleasant” activity of worrying about tomorrow. After all, some people are not happy unless they have some crisis about which to worry. Yet, as the saying goes, tomorrow never comes.

So concentrate on the present moment. Look at what you have to deal with, now. Maybe that is planning what will happen tomorrow. But make sure that you have dealt with current issues, first.

As for the picture, it is a photograph of Cribyn from the shoulder of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons. It’s not a hard walk, but you know you have been exercising when you get up there. I took the photograph in 2012.

The point of the picture is that the goal may be to reach the summit, as it was for my wife and me, earlier this year. We are proud to have reached the top of Pen y Fan in 2012. However, part way up, this year, my wife felt unwell enough to complete the walk. She said, rightly, that she should go back to the car at the foot of the mountain, and I agreed. She suggested that I go on and reach the summit. However, there were only two of us in the party. As much as I wanted to reach the top of Cribyn, the safety of my team came first. She would have done the same for me. It was a case of being in the present moment.

As a result of that aborted attempt, I have failed in my goal to reach the summit of Pen y Fan, again, this year. But I am happy in the knowledge that my wife was, and is, safe beside me. That is what mindfulness is all about.