As Eckhart Tolle shared in The Power of Now, he tells the story of two monks walking through a forest. They come upon a river and see a woman struggling to cross. Even though it’s against their rules and customs to touch a woman, one of the monks goes over, lifts the woman, and helps her across the river.

He sets her down, makes sure she’s okay, and then the two monks continue on their way. A little while later, the monk who witnessed the incident says to the other, “I can’t believe you carried that woman across the river.”
To which the first monk responds, “I set that woman down miles ago. You’re still carrying her.”

That story says something so important — how often we carry baggage and negativity with us long after the moment has passed. We’re constantly reliving our worst moments or imagining some kind of disaster in the future. So much of life is spent either replaying the past or worrying about a future that hasn’t happened.

But the truth is, none of that helps. It doesn’t do any good.

We have a choice in what we focus on. We can choose to live in the present. We can choose to focus on what we’re grateful for and all the beauty around us. Or we can dwell on the negative. 

Whenever we catch ourselves spiraling into negative thinking, we can always return to the breath. Just by becoming aware of it — observing the inhale and the exhale — we can interrupt that stream of thought.

So often, we’re so focused on something upsetting or frightening that we don’t even see what’s happening right in front of us. We’re so absorbed in the past or some imagined future that we miss the rainbow above us, or the kids laughing and playing nearby.

There is so much richness in the now, so much more than anything our minds can invent.