Here & Now — Luke Turpin

2/13/24

This bit of writing is about the Present Moment: what it is, how to inhabit it, and stuff that keeps us from it.

Question: Did you know that Kenny Chesney has his own branded lifestyle called No Shoes Nation? I sure didn’t. I stumbled across his radio station on XM the other day and Kenny’s song, Here and Now was playing. It’s not a great track, please don’t hear me recommending it, but the title hooked itself into my brain. Here and Now.

That evening I was watching Instant Regret Compilation #15 on YouTube while my kids were playing in the living room. Solid parenting. Annie came over and started bugging me and I tried to ignore her. But the damn Kenny Chesney song played in my head, “Heeeeeeeere and now. Nowhere else in the world tonight. You and me, ain't it good to be alive. Ain't no better place, ain't no better time.”

He’s cheesy. He’s Velveeta queso cheesy. But he’s right. All my favorite memories come from experiences where I was immersed in what I was doing. There really ain’t no better time than the present moment. But if that’s true, then why am I regularly looking for an off-ramp from being present?

Because Kenny is only telling one half of the story. The present is the best. However the present is also the worst. It’s everything in between too. In the present I’m tired. In the present I’m congested. In the present I have work to do. In the present are feelings like pain, anger, frustration, boredom, loss, sickness, and grief.

It’s so much easier to be distracted than it is to be present to my wife. It’s so much easier to fantasize about the future than to enjoy what I already have. It’s so tempting to gaze into the past like Gatsby, editing life like a montage, than it is to make peace with who I am today.

So why do it? Why fight the current to remain present? Is it even worth it?

I chose to believe that it is. The inconvenient, clumsy, at-times painful present is the only place where life happens LIVE. Everything else is a copy.

I also choose to believe that experiencing my feelings makes me into who I can become. There is no courage without fear. Creativity grows out of boredom. Grief and empathy are inextricably linked. And praying for energy to play with my kids is about as honest a prayer as I’ve got.

I hope you don’t read this and think I’ve got it all figured. The truth is that some unexplored piece of this is still nagging at me. Maybe it’s bothering me that I can know all this and still choose to tune out. Maybe I’m waking up to some distraction demolition that needs to be done (deleting YouTube from my phone). Maybe I just feel powerless to change.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the present is the point at which time touches eternity. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, trying to imagine what it might look like. That’s the little memento enclosed in this note. Two circles. The smaller one to represent space time. That’s you, me, and the dinosaurs. The larger to represent eternity. All that is beyond. I know the scale is way off but hey! it was a design decision and how does one scale for eternity anyway?

The flat disc of space time spins, grazing the effervescent orb of eternity at a single point, that being February 13th, 2024 at 2:56PM, aka the present moment.

Is this a mountaintop moment? No. Will I be replaying it on my death bed? No. But this tiny, forgettable afternoon in February happens once and I’m invited. Will I attend?

Thanks for reading. May we be where our feet are.

Luke