I just read a very enlightening thing today. Actually this is the second time I'm going through Alan Watt's book "The book on the taboo against knowing who you are".
The concept of 'being present' and 'living in the moment' has been preached by many schools of thought and I've been exposed to them for many years now. Another way of looking at the living in the moment idea is that one should limit expectations of future events.
However no explanation has been totally satisfactory to me as to convince me through and through to limit how much I over-think the future. Nothing I've come across have had a lasting impact.
Alan makes an interesting point in his book regarding how in order to understand any one thing (be it organism or inanimate matter) one not only needs to understand the item itself, but also the environment in which it exists. To only understand the items is only seeing half the picture.
For the past few days/weeks I've been thinking about a trip I'll be taking later this year, and what I should do while on the trip, as well as how to behave around some close friends while on the trip. While knowing I should be living in the moment and not spend too much (or any) energy contemplating the future, it's hard not imagining what could happen. I know my friends pretty well, but the context of the events on that trip will shape their actions in ways I can't fathom.
I spend a lot of time in my head. I know that, which is why I've been working for so many years to be more present, and manage expectations. But as you know, this is easier said then done.
The connection I made this morning was that it's pointless to think about how certain future events may unfold, and/or have expectation of how things will turn out. Reason being that even though we may understand (or think we understand based on prior past events) how a certain item functions or how a person behaves, the context of the moment (the environment and everything else that's taking place in that time) will shape the way the item or person behaves, in unimaginable ways.
This realization is quite comforting to me. It's comforting because it gives me a reason to not over-think the future