The goal is not to be better and better. The goal, every day, is to simply feel where you are and accept it. What is happiness, after all? Happiness is enjoying yourself as you are right now and connecting to other people as they are . That’s it. You don’t have to change anything. You don’t have to win anyone over. You just have to savor this day.

I... See more

For all its chilled-out associations, the attempt to be here now is therefore still another instrumentalist attempt to use the present moment purely as a means to an end, in an effort to feel in control of your unfolding time. As usual, it doesn’t work. The self-consciousness you experience when you seek too effortfully to be “more in the moment”... See more

For one thing, as a finite human being in a world of infinite inputs, you’re always going to have too much to do. So it makes no sense to put off enjoyment or aliveness until such time as you’re no longer facing an unmanageable to-do list; you are, I regret to inform you, likely to end your life with a long to-do list of uncompleted tasks.