In defence of the fleeting present

Life is lived in small measures. Small hopes. Small things to look forward to. It is only in retrospect that these little links appear as one long chain of hopes realized or compromised. Trail of foot prints which in their moment were all path breaking but much beaten in hindsight.

The chimera of mission, vision and focus all find permanence only in post facto postulations. In essence they are all infinitesimal steps taken in the being of moment to moment that have meandered their way to get somewhere. So never forego the meagre present for the elusive Holy Grail of bigger tomorrow.

In the miasma of suspended hopes, choked aspirations and suffocating political rhetoric every pie in the sky appears larger than life. An optical illusion. The more diffused the light at the end of the tunnel the larger the apparent aperture. Photographers have a word for it – blooming.

Instantaneous gratification has a lot to recommend itself. Hark not the fakir who hawks the virtues of self-denial. Beware the cult of sado-masochists. Give wide berth to guilt peddlers. Fulfillment is always fleeting there is no permanence to euphoria. The seekers of eternal ecstasy either take the self-deluding route of hallucinogens or settle for intellectual masturbation of experiential nirvana. Both convenient vehicles of self-deception.

The credo of working in the present, living in the present and enjoying in the present for the present and of the present is the only realizable life philosophy. A life that everyone, willy nilly, leads - but not everyone accepts it. Most of the time retrospective vision and rationalization accords to it its own tag and aura imparting pseudo respectability, which resonates well with societal norms of self-perpetuation and preservation.