Everyone keeps telling us we need goals to strive for, a bucket list, or some other form of imaginary scaling instead of just letting us be. I know it might be hard to let someone be when they’ve eaten a bowl of ice cream on their couch for the past six nights while watching Love Actually, but that might just be what they want right now. Isn’t it Mel Robbins who said, “Let Them”?
Why are so many people trying to get there when they are here? Here and there are often not as far apart as people think. It’s about living in the present, not the past or the future, but it’s also about being truly present. If your feet tell you that you are in a park, even if you are thinking about how Charlotte sneered at you at the office meeting, you are still in a park. You are where you are.
Maybe you should stop for a second and take a look around. Here might have a lot to offer. I know there looks good with its utopian society, wild orgies that everyone is okay with, and free pizza 24/7, but that’s a mirage. It’s easy to build there up to be something it’s not because we are here, not there. The view from afar may be a movie.
It’s really bad when you are there in your mind, but your kid asks you why some animals are going extinct. It’s worse when you can smell a flower on a walk, and you are looking at your phone. I am in my bed, writing on a laptop cradled on my knees, with one cat under my legs and others roaming around. My bedroom isn't messy, but it isn’t tidy either. I don’t care.
Trees live outside my window, intercepted by power lines in my view. The power lines aren't beautiful, but they are there. Nothing is perfect. But most things just are. The same things will be there that are here, but your dream won’t remind you of that fact. But you will wake up.
I never wanted to be there. I don’t know why. I spent so much time alone in my room growing up that it became the place I needed to be. I never stood on a crest, looking out over the vast land, hoping I would one day be there. I just crossed my legs under my bed, set up my game of Strat-O-Matic baseball on my bed, and played the day away.
© Jonathan Greene, October 31, 2026
