It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write. Why? Well, I’ve been, like many others, too busy imagining, arranging, re-arranging, and working towards my tomorrow. Oh, I’ve been awash with tides of apprehension and anxiety in the process alright, but I’ve been at it anyway.

Force of habit.

But wait, I’ve been busy with something else too: deconstructing thread by thread, analyzing, unraveling really, my past, so as to secure my present and thereby of course, my future. It’s tiring, yes, exhausting most nights, but then again, force of habit, you see.

I’ve kept myself so wonderfully busy with these two hobbies of the mind that I’ve had no time at all in the now. It’s a haze. A misty bit of today that I can’t seem to focus my mind on. But I’m fine, as long as the past doesn’t repeat itself and I’m holding on fast to tomorrow, today will manage itself, or so I tell myself. Right? Shouldn’t it?

It cannot.

But then what do I do? What more do I do?

I decide to go for a walk. Not in the park, though the sky does don an inviting blush and the place I live in is green and alive with the chirping of birds. No, I choose to close my eyes and wander within.

It is difficult to walk here. Very difficult. The two hobbies come rushing back. They fight for attention and muddle everything for a few minutes. So I take my attention to my breath. It feels shaky, like the string of a kite mid-flight. Slowly, it gets longer, more steady, it feels cooler too. I haven’t done anything to steady the kite, just taken my attention to the string. It wavers a little in between, yes, and the kite is unsteady again, moving slightly towards the past and then leaning towards the future, but it is willing to come back to the centre now. Now. Now, now, now. Everything I need, everything I really, deeply want, is here. In my journey within, no matter how brief, there is the sunshine I’ve been craving, the birds I’ve been longing to hear, the fruits I’ve been wanting to taste, the stream I’ve been waiting to laugh with. Now. This present moment. I draw a deep breath and, release my hold on life.

I realize the need to develop a new hobby, a new habit.

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In my today, I have managed my past, in it, I have built a tomorrow. butterfly-kite