To enjoy life means to enjoy the journey even though the journey itself implies that we are incomplete.

— Mike Dooley

It’s happened to you.  I know that it has.

You’re at a meeting, a social function, a cocktail party.  You’re engaged in (what you think to be) compelling conversation. You’re “on.” You’re laughing, gesticulating, exchanging pithy remarks. And then suddenly you see it:  you’re comrade’s eyes. They shift – ever so slightly – perhaps just over your right shoulder – just beyond, to the other side of the room – where someone of “greater” social significance is standing.

And then the polite dismissal: “I need to go freshen my drink, great to talk with you, let’s grab coffee someday!”

(Which you read as, “Wow, what a boring loser you are!”)

You know what I’m talking about.  OMG!  You’ve done it yourself. (And yes, I’ve done it too.)

Aren’t we always looking beyond?

To the next day, the next opportunity, the next weekend, the next game, the next goal, the next vacation, the next year, the next trip, the next job, the next chapter, the next boat, the next climb, the next house, the next… ?

We want to achieve.  We want to step it up. We want to get better.

We yearn for new, improved, better, different.

Isn’t that the way we’re hard wired?

And isn’t that a good thing? After all, where would we be in the world, in medicine, agriculture, industry, technology, research, space exploration, art and entertainment if we didn’t have the capacity to imagine, to envision, and to make manifest our most audacious dreams?

But here’s the Edge:  if we’re always looking across the room, we miss out on what’s right in front of us.  If we’re always living our goal, we fail to live our life.

If we fail to live now, we fail to live at all.

The past is gone.  The future is yet to be.  Now is all there is.

The great twentieth century philosopher Paul Tillich speaks of the eternal now, the now in which we dwell, the now in which we possess all of the past and the present and the yet to come.  The now that encompasses all that we have been, all that we are and all that we might be. It is in this now that we must live.

One of Buddhism’s greatest teachings is this: Be here now.

Show up. Be present. Not distracted. Not somewhere else. Here. Now.

Time and time again I learn that my heart speaks to me in the present, in the person who is in conversation with me now, in the task that is right before me, in this challenge that overwhelms me, in the burning fatigue that overtakes me, in this laughter that envelopes me, in the love that now embraces me.

Time and time again I learn that the Universe doesn’t make mistakes.  There are twists and turns and ups and downs; horrific crushing failures; and towering, soaring successes. Chance meetings, missed connections, flights delayed, serendipity and surprise.

All of it on purpose.  All of it with meaning. All of it with import.

And if we’re somewhere else, we miss it.

And if we miss what is, we miss what might become.

So these days, I strive to be more present at the social functions and the parties and the meetings I attend, in the conversations that that I have with friends and colleagues and clients and loved ones, in the projects on which I’m working and, yes, even in the ambitions that I am undertaking.  I try not to let my eye wander to the far corner of the room to discern what might be better or different, more significant or meaningful.  But to remain present to the magnificence of what unfolds before me.

And when I find myself wondering where else I could be or should be or might be – or when my conversational partner wanders off to certain greener pastures, the mantra I repeat to myself is this: “Perfect just as it is.”

Mike Dooley writes, “Your life can be stress-free, when every day you feel satisfied with everything you did and didn’t do, always knowing that you’ve done enough, and always feeling that you are exactly where you should be, breezing through your days with a powerful sense of grace, feeling your connection to the Universe, and appreciating that you really do have all the time in the world.”

Long ago and far away, I gave my university commencement address.  I called it The Journey and The Dream.  Life was comprised of both, I said.  And both are necessary: the Journey of our life as it it; the Dream of what it might become.  What I have discovered is that the two are not separate, they are not at all different; they are not at all two; they are the same.

The Journey and the Dream are one.  Life is lived in the moment. In this moment.  In this eternal now.

And its damn near perfect.

How good it is to strive.  How perfect it is to be.