“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
I used to read words like these as instructions.
As if peace was a destination I simply hadn’t worked hard enough to reach yet.
Stay present.
Stop overthinking.
Let go of the past.
Don’t worry about tomorrow.
Simple in theory. Almost impossible in practice.
Because being human means carrying memories long after moments have passed. It means replaying conversations in the shower, imagining futures before they happen, bracing for things that may never come. Our minds wander because they are trying to protect us, prepare us, understand us.
And yet, somewhere along the way, many of us stop actually living.
We become trapped between what already happened and what might happen next.
The past can be heavy.
Not only because of grief or trauma, but because of nostalgia, regret, guilt, old versions of ourselves we cannot return to or undo. Sometimes we revisit old wounds so often they begin to feel like home. We convince ourselves that if we analyse them enough, we’ll finally make peace with them.
The future can feel equally consuming.
A constant checklist of responsibilities, deadlines, fears, expectations and “what ifs.” We live waiting for the next milestone, the next pay rise, the next holiday, the next season of life. We tell ourselves we’ll relax once things settle down, even though life rarely ever does.
And while our minds are stretched between yesterday and tomorrow, today quietly passes us by.
The strange thing about peace is that it rarely arrives loudly.
It doesn’t always look like healing montages or life-changing revelations. More often, it exists in ordinary moments we almost miss entirely:
- A warm cup of coffee before everyone wakes up.
- A child reaching for your hand without thinking.
- Wind through an open window.
- Sitting beside someone you love in comfortable silence.
- Laughing so genuinely you forget yourself for a second.
Presence is not perfection.
It’s attention.
It’s noticing your own life while it is happening.
I think many of us believe we must earn peace. That we’ll finally deserve it once we become more organised, more healed, more productive, more emotionally evolved. But peace is not a reward handed out at the end of suffering. Sometimes it is simply the choice to stop abandoning the moment you are already in.
That doesn’t mean ignoring pain or pretending anxiety and depression are simple states of mind that can be switched off through mindfulness alone. Mental health is real, complex and deeply layered. But there is still something valuable in remembering that our thoughts are not always where our lives are.
Your body may be sitting in sunlight while your mind is reliving something from ten years ago.
Your child may be laughing beside you while you are mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios for next week.
And maybe the gentlest thing we can do for ourselves is return, again and again, to what is actually here.
Not forever.
Just for this moment.
Because life is made of moments.
And too many of them disappear while we are somewhere else entirely.
Mr Gibbous and The Wildling 