STUCK IN THE NOW

................ by Stanley

......Living in ‘the now’ is an attractive idea, but it is possible to be stuck in the present unable to get out. Present concerns seem to fill the scene demanding all one’s attention. But ‘the now’ is porous and full of holes through which the past can insinuate itself, dressed up to resemble an issue in the present – just as though it were the real problem.
.......One often sees people stuck in a present-time problem that recurs over and over – maybe in various forms, but always really the same problem. Talking about it can discharge the feelings on it and so relieve the pressure, but each time nothing leads beyond the present-time constituents of the difficulty. It just stays as it is; and when it’s gone, it’s gone – until next time.
........In each crisis a past trauma takes the form of a present-time problem. That’s why each crisis looks the same.
........One can sense in all this a discernable resistance to the past. Not really apparent, though, because the person can refer to the past in a general sort of way like: ‘I’m sure it all comes from the way I was brought up’ or ‘I don’t want to blame my parents for everything’. They will even refer to certain specific roots of the problem in earlier times, but it’s only a passing acknowledgment on their way to total immersion in the present situation, the real guts of it – or so they believe.
.........But this attitude is part of a bigger picture. The way they have always dealt with painful situations, a particularly childlike strategy, was to dissociate from it. When the trauma was over they cut off from it, go out and play, pretending it didn’t happen. You can be pretty sure that when a person is badly stuck in the present, the early years were very painful. The dissociative strategy became a way of dealing with intolerable situations. The past trauma may not be a specific incident, but the whole atmosphere of childhood.
........As a kid dissociation was the only thing they could do. But it has consequences in adult life where the person will lurch from crisis to crisis.
........As I said, in each crisis the past trauma takes the form of a present-time problem. Once the person has discharged the emotion on the present issue the doors then close again and it is as though it didn’t happen. They feel better. But the total situation is the same as before. The past trauma sits waiting in the wings for the next trigger.
........The problem is not so much the trauma in the past, but the continuous style of dissociation. One must be aware that the fear and worry surrounding the past event is embedded in this strategy of dealing with it; and the anxiety about slipping out of ‘the now’ is enormous, so the day must by filled with worrisome activities that keep the mind fixed exclusively in the present.
........The wisest and most balanced people often have a very painful past. There is a way in which the past can enrich the present by a continuous and subtle interchange with it, bringing an emotional ambivalence and depth. It isn’t that one has learned from the past – nothing so mundane. It’s more like a certain fluidity, a mutual interchange, where the present influences the past as well! One moves through a landscape that is never the same, never fixed or one-dimensional. The doors are all open and each moment is always more than it seems.
........It’s not about being able to remember all the facts and fantasies of a lifetime, not about literal remembering. Not about remembering, so much as being open to subtle reminders of where I have come from and who I have been – ghosts I might have neglected or forgotten. It’s about whether these inaudible intricacies can whisper and whether you cock your ear to listen. Living in the now is fine, but it’s also a question of being receptive.

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