I do my best not to live in the rearview mirror. There’s too much pain back there—too many memories that still sting. Sometimes I wish my brain injury had wiped those moments clean, but that’s not how the brain works.
A neurologist once explained it to me this way: long-term memory is like a record—remember those old vinyl albums? Every experience, every emotion, every sound is etched into the grooves of our brain. You can’t just scratch it out. Short-term memories, on the other hand, are fleeting because they never get “pressed” into that record. They fade quickly, as if they never existed at all.
I know that’s a long setup to get to my point—but stay with me.
How many of us live in the future?
How many spend every waking moment worrying about tomorrow—about whether there will be enough money in the bank, enough time to retire, enough health to make it that far?
I hear it everywhere—at work, in coffee shops, at the grocery store. Conversations filled with worry about what hasn’t even happened yet. And I can’t help but think… I remember hearing those same fears as a child. Different people, same worries.
Somehow, we’ve been conditioned from birth to plan for what’s next. To think ahead. To save, to prepare, to predict. And yes, there’s wisdom in that. It’s good to be responsible, to make sure our families are taken care of. But somewhere along the way, we moved out of today and started taking up permanent residence in tomorrow.
The truth is, none of us are guaranteed another sunrise.
This morning, somewhere, someone who was busy planning their future didn’t wake up. Their family is now preparing for their final goodbye. Maybe it was a father who kept saying, “I’ll go see that movie next week—it’s cheaper when it comes out to stream.” But next week never came.
And that’s what we risk when we live in the future—we miss the sunsets, the laughter of friends, the warmth of a neighbor’s hello. We trade the beauty of now for the illusion of someday.
So, take a breath. Slow down. Turn down the heat on worry and let it simmer quietly on the back burner.
Look behind you when you need to learn from it.
Look ahead when you need to prepare for it.
But live—really live—right here in the middle.
Because this moment, right now, is the only place life actually happens.