First, let’s start with noting that a present is a gift. So, we can refer to the present as a gift. You could have not been born or you could have been dead. Surely you can remember, like me, a near death experience. You survived because there’s a purpose for your life.

You may say that you can’t just be about the present because you must plan for the future. True and we will expand on that concept. When you get to that future, say tomorrow, wouldn’t that now be the present? I wish to submit that if you are not living in the present, you are planning for it. Ok Jon, what’s so groundbreaking about that? It is, how we plan.

We are encouraged to live in the moment or enjoy the present. Can we enjoy it as much as we could if it isn’t properly prepared for? How can you enjoy a meal you haven’t added the right ingredients to, in the right proportion, at the right time and allowed to cook for the right duration? To have the tomorrow you want, you have no choice but to start today. You may start imperfectly, and the preparation of your ingredients may be out of whack. But you will get more refined as you continue to value your present. There will be pain today or pain in the future since there is a price to get there. You choose the currency. Will you pay the pain of starting and growing or instead the pain of regret from what you woulda, coulda, shoulda done? The pain of regret is more painful.

Today, for this gift of the present, be grateful then enjoy it, for sure. Don’t worry about what’s past because you can’t change it. You may feel pain when you look at the past maybe because you didn’t do a good job in preparing for it or there were things you couldn’t control. Now, look at future, and make it better. The quality of that new present, that new gift, depends on the quality you make of this gift, this present.