I have a vivid childhood memory of the stack of books on the floor next to my Mom’s side of the bed. I don’t know why she never invested in a proper nightstand to put them on. The books in this pile were forever changing. However, some of the book covers and titles still flash before my eyes: Happiness is an Inside Job with the writing on the cover fading from yellow to orange to purple like a rainbow, Inner Strengths a thick hardcover book which she covered with plastic like one would a school textbook, Mr God, this is Anna with the picture of the girl with the red dress throwing her arms up in the air and The Power of Now by Eckhard Tolle. The cover of Ekckard Tolle’s book is not particularly exciting: it has no picture, and the writing is quite plain. However, it’s the title of the book that is stuck in my mind – like a slogan, it rolls easily off one’s tongue and has a rhythm that makes one want to repeat it: “The Power of Now, the Power of Now, the Power of Now”.
The present moment is all you have, as the past and future are illusions created by the mind – Eckhart Tolle
Medicine trains one to live from one deadline to the next, and being goal-oriented has helped me thrive in the environment of Cardiothoracic surgery. However, when life finally slowed down, I couldn’t relax, and I couldn’t feel peace. I felt lost. I created “goals” or “deadlines” of no real significance just to have something to work towards or look forward to. I scheduled events, organised vacations to exotic locations and enrolled for another degree. I planned for birthdays and Christmas, buying gifts months in advance and sending them so they always arrived in time. I lived in the future. When completing one thing, I focused on the next. I never stopped to celebrate when I achieved a goal, nor did I ever feel satisfied with my life. It was as if parts of my days, months and even years were precursors of time helping me get to where I want to be next or what I must do next. Unfortunately, if enough time is spent anticipating and preparing, it adds up, and a lot of one’s life becomes a waiting game. I suppose it comes from the idea that there will be a happily ever after – “if I just do this or that, then all will be good”. The problem was that I never reached the ending I thought I would. I tend to dream about how my life will change when I achieve a goal, and how exciting, well-deserved or relaxing an event, holiday or weekend away will be. Unfortunately, my fantasies were usually far better than reality. So after realising my ambition, attending the event or coming back from the holiday, I felt exactly the same. It did not live up to my expectations, and nothing had changed. The reality of the moment was a letdown. I was disappointed by the present.
In today’s rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just being – Eckhart Tolle
An Instagram post by dr.nshaik states that living in constant “what’s next?” mode is exhausting – it dulls the simple joys, makes rest feel unsafe and disconnects you from your body. I think many people struggle with this, not only professionals. My Mom most likely did, why else would she have read Eckhart Tolle’s book? People who live from one goal to another don’t do so because they love stress, but because their nervous systems grew up inside it. They were never taught that rest isn’t weakness but rather an essential part of being. This way of life is unsustainable and eventually leads to burnout. 2025 has been a tough year, but it has taught me a valuable lesson. I had to let go of the future. The year had thrown so many unexpected curveballs at me that it became easier to be in the moment and deal with whatever needed my immediate attention than to try to plan for a future I couldn’t control or predict, despite my best efforts.
Beautiful pieces have been written about the importance of mindfulness – the ancient practice and supposed modern anecdote to our perpetual dissatisfaction. How to live in the moment, how to be conscious of every sensation of your daily experience. The caveat of being in the now for people who struggle with anxiety and depression is that they become so busy focusing on how to get through each moment that they can’t fully experience what is happening. They don’t form memories of a moment as they should. They often can’t remember situations in which they were physically present because they were emotionally absent. They are not ungrateful for life or trying to ignore the moment – they are surviving. Brianna Wiest writes in her essay The Art of Mindfulness that, even though one thinks of mindfulness as completely immersing oneself in the moment by being conscious and present, it is important to realise that to achieve true mindfulness, one needs to be mindless. She explains that we live in a time when we are so concerned with what we think and how we understand things that the uncertainty and discomfort of the present moment prevent us from being fully present. Despite our best efforts to just experience the moment, we start to label, categorise, process, define and explain things. Wiest believes that the key to experiencing the present is not to focus on the now but to lose focus and ignore one’s mind.
Mindlessness – that is what one should strive for. However, not thinking about anything and just perceiving and experiencing will be extremely difficult for me because I have a mental dialogue in my head that never stops. Michael A. Singer writes in his book The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, that this voice inside one’s head never shuts up. It keeps going and going. He writes that reality is just too real for most of us, so we temper it with the mind, hence the voice inside one’s head. It is a protection mechanism that buffers oneself from life rather than living it. Singer poses a liberating idea: “This world is unfolding and really has very little to do with you and your thoughts. It was here long before you came, and it will be here long after you leave. In the name of attempting to hold the world together, you’re really just trying to hold yourself together”.
Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be – Eckhart Tolle
Singer is right. I realised I was never holding anything together, and it was always impossible to plan for the future. I had to let go of the illusion that I were. This year, I want to work at quieting the voice in my head. I want to stop figuring things out. I want to submerge in the present mindlessly. I do not want to fantasise about what is to come, and I don’t want to overanalyse after the fact. I’m off to a pretty good start: We usually go on holiday the week of my birthday in March, and the hotel group we like to visit has a yearly 20% discount sale in February. Thus, to save 20%, we make reservations more than a year in advance, even before we go on the annual holiday for the current year. A few nights ago, my husband tried to discuss airline options and flight plans for the trip we just booked for 2027. I answered him that I do not wish to think that far ahead and that I first want to enjoy the March 2026 holiday, which is two weeks away. And before we get to that, I want to enjoy everything that this week and the rest of this month have to offer. I gave myself a pat on the back for not succumbing to the temptation of planning an exciting trip, for wanting to stay in the moment, even though it was just a regular weeknight. I’m accepting the power of NOW!
