Living in the Now (A Mal-Constructed Justification for Dyeing my Hair)

Scene 1: August 5th, 3:00A.M. A sleeping mother human's (JUDY) room. It is pitch black. The curtains are drawn. A sound machine hums in the corner.

Enter KIRA, a six year girl with pigtails and a huge grin. Flings arms in excitement.

KIRA: Mommy, Mommy!

Judy snaps up in fear, gasping when she hears her daughter's desperate plea.

JUDY: What's wrong?
KIRA: I know what I want for Christmas!

Judy groans. Never wake the sleeping mother.

JUDY: A mother who doesn't get pestered for gifts in the middle of the night?
KIRA: Do they sell those at Tadpole Crossing?
JUDY: Go to sleep. I'll wake you in 4 months.

END SCENE.

SCENE 2. The deathtrap, otherwise known as high school. Crowded hallway. Enter an innocent Kira, chomping on a protein bar.
Enter intimidating bully, who eyes innocent bystander.

BULLY: Did you set your hair on fire today?

(16 year old) KIRA: D'uhhhhhh...Allow me five minutes to think of a witty response and I'll get back to you on that.
(Five minutes later, when bully has exited the vicinity): Yeah, I set it on fire...with my smashing good looks.
God, I can't wait for college.

SCENE 3
A college dorm room. Kira is studying furiously (allow this term to be used liberally).
KIRA: I can't wait for Shoshoni.
And grad school.
And marriage.
And anything that's not now.

So I have this tendency to constantly think about the future. I genuinely enjoy planning things, but they rarely turn out as expected. The present moment frustrates me. It bores me. What was once new turns into routine. Why, this shirt was new and exciting just two weeks ago:

How could a foxy shirt become routine, I ask of you?
All of a sudden, I'm thinking of the new animal shirts out there, the new shopping excursions I could embark on, the new shades of yellow I could look like a suntanned lima bean in.

I seriously need to stop this whole shopping thing.

I thought I was alone (or at least a minority) in this mindset, but enter Bryarly Bishop's post in which she talks about the exact same thing. Bishop writes that "I sometimes worry that that mindset will lead me to live my life straining so hard for the future that I miss the present and end up with a head full of half-experienced memories."

She nailed this phenomenon--I can't even count the number of yoga classes where I lay in Savasana, wondering "what am I going to pay way too much money on cook for dinner?"

Sometimes I feel like an impulsive person, but most of the time, I'm just sitting there, wondering about what my future will entail, if I'll finally be able to parallel park--you know, the important stuff.

As important as it is to be goal oriented, that mindset seems to serve us less as we grow older. We go through our entire primary education focused on that golden goal: to get into college. Working through college pays off when we get to grad school. Doing well in grad school gets us to a career. Once we've got that career, that marriage, those kids....

what is the purpose? Sure, there are promotions that roll around every once in a while, but there aren't any pervading "standard "goals shoved in your face.

(This goes hand in hand with my theory that you officially become a pro-adult when people stop asking "what are you going to do with your life?")

It seems to be both comforting and terrifying once you hit that time when you've got your life figured out. It's unsettling to know that this is it, I've found my purpose. No more weird rebellion phases, no more fashion dares...
no more cinnamon challenges. 
It's like getting the Park Place property in Monopoly. It's predictable. It's kinda fun to laugh at the scrambling minions, but it can get boring.

Although it's nice to have comfort of knowing that my life is more flexible and freer, it presents me with the daydreamer's dilemma. How much of the now should I immerse myself in, rather than thinking of the then? Ideally, I'd stop the thinking the now and start feeling the now, but let's be real here, I'm an English major. There's no ceasing the analytical here.

If you just keep floating around, thinking it will become more liberating tomorrow, that moment will never come. There's no 9A.M. appointment with bliss.

So, I'm still gonna have fun imagining the tomorrow, but perhaps the persistent hope that it will "get better" is a silly one. Imagining the future shouldn't be at the expense of feeling the present.

And hey, if you let yourself fully immerse yourself in the now, sometimes what seems like a bad decision actually becomes an epic one:

Impulsivity at its finest.

Namaste.