Every day we wake up is another canvas for us to paint. Too much cliche? Yeah, I think so too, but it fits.
The key to filling that canvas is making choices. I have a quote that I love and I think it comes from Joe Dispenza, but I could be wrong. Anyway, to paraphrase, it is, “you can’t create a perfect past.” That simply means what is done is done and no amount of rumination can change it. You can learn from it, but you can’t make the past better or worse.
Much like having the inability to change the past, you can’t live the future today. You can plan, you can have goals, you can have hope, but you can’t live it today. You can only live moment to moment.
Every day we wake up with a finite amount of energy for that day, a finite amount of attention, a finite amount of hours. Everything you do eats into that cache. Spending time in the past eats into it, and daydreaming about the future eats into it. The choices you make decide whether that cache is used wisely or not.
The key to choices is taking action. If something in the past bothers you, do not dwell, but take what you have learned and put it into action, in this moment. If there is something you want to achieve in the future, take an action right now, however big or small, but in this moment.
In the end, we will all die. Memento Mori. It is how we spend our moments that define how we lived. How we spend our moments is decided by the choices we make. If you knew you had ten years left how would you spend this moment? What if you knew you only had until this afternoon? That difference should not matter if you are making good choices right now.