You feel sick. You want lollies. You need to pee. Your sister is pulling faces at you. Your brother punched your arm. You hate “I Spy”. There are only cows to see. Cows smell. Are we there yet?

Maybe this was you as a wriggly kid in the back seat on a long road trip but you don’t want to live your life that way as an adult.

You might be constantly checking your iphone, scheduling, maximising, packing it all in, checking the time, planning obsessively, thinking about whether you’ll ever make it (to the next thing or in life generally).

Here

Here is the only place you’ll ever be.  Learn to like it. There is always somewhere else. We don’t live somewhere else. We may be distracted thinking of the future, or the past, but here and now is all we have.

It is great to have a direction and some goals but those points in the Great Big Future There may never arrive. Or, you may not notice when they do because now you want to get to the new There (which is somewhere else again).

Liking life now

If you don’t like the in-between points then you don’t like life. That’s probably a problem. We may want to achieve things, use our gifts, make the world better but that’s not everything.

Appreciating  and enjoying life is also important. The world is full of interesting and beautiful things and also some terrible ones.

If you lived for a hundred years there would still be wonders to see, things to learn and work that needs to be done.

Ways to like life now:

  • What is good right now?
  • What makes you laugh?
  • What are your favourite things? (list them Sound of Music style)
  • What has improved over the last year, month or week?
  • What fun simple things could you do right now or today?
  • What are you proud of?

You may be There

It is likely that your current Here used to be the dream. Way back then, this was the wonderful There shimmering on the horizon. Did you notice when you got there?

If you’ve been working towards something (one day or moment at a time) you may now be There. Celebrate, enjoy it, throw a party! But there’s a catch: There is Here.

So, if you got some of what you were after (and just some is fine):

  • How did you do it?
  • What did you do right?
  • What worked best for you?
  • Who helped you?
  • What felt most enjoyable on the way?
  • What is good right now, even if it wasn’t on the list?

Learning to like the road trip

What would you tell the kid in the back seat? It is true, the trip may be uncomfortable sometimes but whinging only makes it worse. Lollies are great but they’re not the meaning of life. Look closer, the world is not entirely populated by damn cows. Sibling rivalry is character forming.

The kid is right too

Then again, maybe the kid in you has it right. A kid wants every moment to be “there” so they can explore. Let them out of that car that moves too fast.

Climb trees, play with dogs, wriggle, run, smell the grass up close, make things up, play. A kid knows that pushing forward too long is no good, it takes the fun out of living.

Choose a destination, steer towards it, enjoy. Stop, rest and play. Here is exactly where you need to be. Watch out for wombats.

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