Now Is Mine!

by

“Now is mine. I can do what I want with it. I own it, for better or worse.”

That’s from today’s page of Twenty-Four Hours a Day. Read it slowly. Now is mine. Not yesterday, with all its mess. Not next Tuesday, with all its what-ifs. This moment, right here.

A lot of us spent years letting the clock run us. We lived in yesterday’s regret or tomorrow’s dread, and the present slipped right past while we weren’t looking. Recovery hands the moment back to us. What we do with it is up to us!

A life made of nows

The reading keeps going: “I have finally realized the great fact that all I have is now. This sweeps away all vain regret, and it makes my thoughts of the future free of fear.”

Then comes the line I can’t shake: “My whole life is only a succession of nows.”

Think about that. Sobriety isn’t one giant mountain you climb once. It’s a string of small moments, and each one is a choice. Stack up enough good nows, and you get a good day. Stack up good days, and you get a good life. Years ago I wrote a short post called Now about how long it took me to realize that every day I’m alive is a gift. That still holds.

The page asks one direct question, and it’s worth asking yourself out loud: “Am I living in the now?”

Stop letting life happen to you

Today’s Courage to Change reading names a sneaky defect: making choices passively, “letting things happen rather than taking action.” The answer it gives is short and strong: “Today I can make active choices.”

Passive feels safe. If I don’t decide, I can’t be wrong, right? Not quite. Not choosing is still a choice. It just hands the steering wheel to somebody else.

Your Daily Reprieve passed along a line from Michael Nelson that says it plainly: “If you don’t like what you’re getting, change what you’re doing.”

In Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode, I put it this way: “No action, no change, know action, know change!” Remember the three frogs on a log? One decides to jump. How many are left on the log? Three! “Deciding to leap and not taking action leaves you in the same place you started!” I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: the choice is ours.

Does this path have a heart?

The Pot Luck reading in Your Daily Reprieve quoted Carlos Castaneda with a question I love: “Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

The meditation that followed described a path with heart as “one that will lead me to compassion, to love, to caring, to the better parts of myself.”

What a filter for today’s choices! Before you say yes to a plan, a job, a relationship, or even an argument, ask yourself whether it leads toward the better parts of you. If it doesn’t, you’re free to step off. It’s your now.

One bad moment is not the whole story

Living in the now cuts both ways. A rough morning doesn’t have to turn into a rough week.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, also quoted in Your Daily Reprieve, said: “You mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat.”

Today’s Daily Ponderables closes with a line worth taping to the bathroom mirror: “There is always another moment in which to begin again.”

Blew it at 10 a.m.? Your next now starts at 10:01. I like to treat setbacks as signals, not stop signs.

You are enough, right now

This morning’s Dynamic Catholic reflection, from Matthew Kelly’s Feminine Genius, adds a gentle piece: “Knowing that you are enough fills you with the grace to relax into the present moment…”

Plenty of us can’t sit still in the present because we think we have to earn our spot in it. You don’t. God already said yes to you. Relax into today and enjoy it!

Five ways to own your now today

  • Name your now. Three times today, stop, take one slow breath, and ask, “Am I living in the now?”
  • Make one active choice. Pick something you’ve been letting “just happen” (a bill, a phone call, an apology) and decide on it before lunch.
  • Run the heart test. Before any big yes, ask, “Does this path have a heart?”
  • Change one small thing. Getting the same result over and over? Change one action this week, not ten.
  • Start over on the spot. When a moment goes sideways, say “next now” and begin again. No waiting for Monday or New Year’s.

Don’t say one day I will… Make today day one!

Grateful for this moment

In Recovery Thinking, 90-Days to Change Your Life! I wrote, “Life is meant to be enjoyed and not to be endured. That is the key to reasonable happiness.” You can’t enjoy a moment you’re not in. So let’s quit spending today worrying about yesterday or rehearsing tomorrow.

The Twenty-Four Hours page says it best: “I will take this moment, which has been given to me by the grace of God, and I will do something with it.”

I’m sober today, and I’ve got this moment. That’s a gift I never want to take for granted. Life is GOOOOOOOD!!!

So here’s my question for you: What is one choice you’ll make on purpose in this now, instead of letting it happen to you?

Go, Go, Go… Dan 🙂

Books quoted in this post:

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

A note on anonymity: Although I write about Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, and their literature here, nothing in this post should be taken to imply my membership in any specific mutual support group, in keeping with Tradition Eleven.

—

Reflection note: I wrote this from my own daily readings. Quotes belong to their original authors and sources (Twenty-Four Hours a Day, October 25 / Hazelden Foundation, via Daily Ponderables and Your Daily Reprieve; Courage to Change, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, via Daily Ponderables; Michael Nelson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Carlos Castaneda, via Your Daily Reprieve; the Pot Luck meditation, via Your Daily Reprieve; the Daily Ponderables Closing Thought; Matthew Kelly, Feminine Genius, via the Dynamic Catholic Daily Reflection; Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode; Recovery Thinking, 90-Days to Change Your Life!). I used AI to help organize it and reviewed it before posting.