This is your superpower. Don’t squander it.
Today, I offer you a riddle for a starter:
What is with you in every moment, and then gone?
What is it that delivers the future because of what you decide to do with it?
What is it that will transport you, your loved ones, and the rest of this amazing planet to wherever you decide it should be tomorrow, the day after, and in the decades to come?
It’s your superpower. Everyone who’s alive on this planet right now has it, but none of us use it in the same way, nor should we. Some even go so far as to squander it, but hopefully, not you.
Your superpower is NOW!
Doesn’t this insight make you feel powerful and amazing? Truly, you need very little else to achieve what you desire.
The truth is, everyone has the same number of “nows” in each of our days. Some are doing remarkable things, newsworthy things, celebrated things with it.
Others are sitting semi-paralyzed, feeling impotent or inadequate, unsure of why they’re even here, with far too many these days wishing they weren’t.
And then there are the rest, who fit somewhere in between.
As a member of my tribe, you know you’re here to make things happen.
From the moment you were born, you made things happen. Your presence mobilized your caregivers. You squeaked, cried, and grasped for what you needed. You didn’t hold back. And the caregivers in your universe responded – certainly not perfectly, but well enough that you made it through your infancy and into your childhood and beyond.
You used every moment you had back then to learn, explore, discover, experiment, and flourish as a youngster long before you learned that your moments aren’t limitless during any single incarnation. The world was your oyster. You made things happen.
You still are. So, what are the things you want to make happen today? How are you using NOW these days?
If you’re jumping out of bed every morning eager to welcome a new day, chances are you’re feeling surprisingly good about how you’re spending your nows. And that’s fabulous!
Let Me Tell You About NOW
Now is amoral. It doesn’t have preferences, druthers, or virtue. It’s a lot like money in that way. You can spend your now in whatever way you choose. It won’t judge. It’s just here to grease your skids so you can get wherever you want to go.
You can spend your now watching reruns of your favorite shows. You can spend it shopping, or trekking, or skydiving. You can spend it doing absolutely nothing at all. Right now, you’re spending your precious superpower with me. And I thank you for that, with all my heart!
What I’ve noticed in older folks who know they’re approaching their final days, is that they regret far more the things they didn’t get to than the things they did.
I don’t want that for you. I want you to leave this world feeling empty, like you did everything you set out to do, everything you wanted to do, before someone puts a tag on your toe!
So, again, I gently ask: What’s your plan? What’s your goal? What will you do with your subsequent nows to help deliver the world you want to live in tomorrow?
I have a keen sense that you want to contribute to humankind. You’re no sea lamprey, which latches onto other fish with its tooth-encircled mouth and sucks their lives from them and then moves on to other victims as the previous ones die.
You’re among the more enlightened on this planet, wanting to extend loving-kindness, compassion, and help to yourself and others. You want to heal and be healed from the human sea lampreys in your life.
For some of you, healing will require you to use your precious nows to slow down and meditate. I’m referring to those of you who are Type A personalities like me, driven to produce, produce, produce, all too often at the expense of personal relationships and your health. You may “get” the importance of now – you’re certainly not a procrastinator – you’re a producer! – but not the importance of peace, downtime, and treating yourself and your loved ones as truly beloved individuals. People like us need to realize that it will take 80 years to get to age 80 whether we walk or whether we run, so slowing down to smell the flowers and be with our significant others in significant ways might be a good place to spend a couple of our precious, powerful nows.
For others of you, healing may require you to use your nows to speed up, to stop procrastinating and putting off until tomorrow the things you want to do. You need to use them to feel better about yourself, to affirm your value to yourself and to others.
NOW is here for you. At your service. But it can’t do anything for you other than offer you the space and time to manifest what you want to manifest. Now is nothing but wasted potential without you. Now can do nothing without you in the game.
Time, as we think of it, is a construct. It doesn’t exist for any other animal, vegetable, or mineral that we know of. And yet animals and vegetables know how and when to grow and reproduce, and they, too, reach the end of their life spans and die.
But there has never been a yesterday and there will never be a tomorrow in the true sense of those terms. As an example, if I call someone right now in New Zealand or Australia, they will be a day ahead of me and about five and a half hours behind, but we will be chatting, both of us, in real time, in the NOW. Abraham Lincoln died in the now. All of your precious pets and people were born in the now.
I mention Abraham Lincoln’s death because one time a student told me she had a history teacher who was so good at making history feel it was happening right now that she ended up in tears when President Lincoln was shot and eventually died the next morning, even though the event occurred one hundred years before she was born. She said she was right there in Ford Theater with him as he lay mortally wounded, and near the too-short bed they carried him to, in which he expired hours later. She was there while they pursued his assassin; she read the newspapers of that time in the now. She was transported to a now that still exists in the ether. It didn’t end. It’s still all a part of the now that you and I share at this very moment!
I know it sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t. Literally everything that has ever occurred happened in the now. We live with the vibrations, emotions, and residue of those happenings; we just aren’t usually aware of them.
My student tapped into that reality and found herself in history watching a beloved President’s life slip away from him. And although what we call time travel is a separate topic, it’s rich and ripe because your now is just as potent and its potential is just as real as any other event in history, from the first time a man walked on the moon to the rescue of those miners in Chile a few years ago, who had to be drilled out of a mine that could have become their tomb.
NOW is so crammed with potential that it sometimes screams at me. In fact, it said to me not all that long ago, “You love to sing, so start singing now!” And I’m doing that very thing in my weekly Facebook Deborah King Live shows. It was there to allow me to search for ancient wisdom across the globe from many cultures, to climb the Alps, go to Nepal, to learn to ride horses, and to start a healing and enlightenment practice.
NOW is your superpower. It truly is. I know you may be slightly more accustomed to taking it for granted; we all do for a long time until we get a wake-up call. I know I sure did until my mid-20’s when I was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly NOW became very precious to me. I wanted more of them. I wanted to find ways to make my NOW stretch before me for a full human lifetime.
I used my now to tweak my Type A personality so stress and the illusion of perfection weren’t such drivers as they had been. Instead of perfection, I went for excellence, an easier mountain to climb, and one that is truly attainable. I was profoundly dedicated to giving myself lots more nows!
I don’t know what all or any of your goals are. What I do know for sure is that you have some that haven’t been reached yet. And the only time you have to reach them is – you guessed it! – NOW!
It is my firm belief that we should all leave this incarnation feeling that the bucket list for which we arrived is empty, and that we gave it our all. I think when we do that, we get to choose our next incarnation, having achieved the enlightenment that so many others seem to miss by a hair or a half mile.
So, what floats your boat? What keeps suggesting itself to you that you’ve been reluctant to embrace? You’re the one who needs to make that call. No one else knows you the way you do.
You’re in charge of the now that co-exists with and for you. What joy haven’t you pursued that you want to? What discipline haven’t you mastered that calls out to you? What proverbial or literal hill or mountain do you want to climb next? Who needs your kindness, your listening ear, or your special touch?
You have all the answers to these questions! When you tune in to yourself, you’ll find them. Your next action, whatever it is, will be big or small, but only those affected by it will be able to gauge its size and effect. Sometimes all someone else needs is your smile or a phone call just to say, “I’m thinking of you. I hope you’re having a good day!” or “I hear you’re going through a rough time. How can I help?”
Right now, you’re with me, reading this. Again, thank you so much for spending so many of your precious nows with me. You’re blessing me!
If sidestepping this all-too-often-untapped superpower has become routine in any way to you, this is your gentle reminder that all you have is now to go after what you seek. You’re amazing, unique, and powerful – think of ways to spend who you are and what you know and feel to those who can most benefit from it. I think you’ll find your life unfolding in wonderful ways when you do!