Tag: Right Now

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Right Now, by Phillip Hoyle

Right now I’m packing my bags to make
a road trip to Mid-Missouri, there to celebrate Christmas with my children,
grandchildren, ex-wife, and probably a few old friends.
Right now I am closing the massage
practice that I’ve sustained for fifteen years.  
Right now I’m cleaning out the massage
studio, distributing furnishings and equipment, and packing up too many things
to take home. My partner is happy for me but not keen on my bringing more
things to the house. Due to the trip, I need to clear the room by Saturday
afternoon if at all possible.
Right now I’m finishing my Christmas
preparations, all of them that I can remember to do.
Right now I’m tending to new
responsibilities related to the co-op art gallery I’ve joined within the past
month.
Right now I’m dealing with feelings
related to my retirement that will occur along with the closing of my practice.
Right now I’m reading a story I
barely found time to write.
Right now I’m tired but hopeful.
All this activity alongside today’s
theme—right now—reminds me of feelings I experienced in my late twenties. I had
left one position in an up-and-coming congregation in order to attend graduate
school. Although I was receiving a nice grant for my studies, I still needed to
supplement my income with a part-time job. I secured one at another church
where I served as a youth minister. In my four years at the prior church I had
learned quite a lot about my work style, both its good habits and not so good
habits. In my new office right above my desk I hung an all-caps note that read:
DO IT NOW. This represented my attempt to overcome a habit of procrastination
especially in tasks that I didn’t relish. I thought I would simply make the
phone call ASAP and become much more efficient. I needed to be efficient. I was
going to school, working (no church job can ever really part-time), and living
with my wife, two children, and sometimes other adults or foster children. My
life was full, busy, exciting, and demanding. I couldn’t waste any time
worrying over some phone call, recruitment task, or arrangement. Do it now seemed wise. It helped
somewhat. Right now is good advice for over-busy folk.
Last Saturday I talked with my friend
Sue about my complicated “right now” feelings. I told her that I wonder how the
loss of intimacy that for years has been provided almost daily through massage
will affect me. I then contrasted the feelings of closing a private practice in
order to retire with those of leaving ministry. In my leaving a congregation some
congregational members may have felt sadden, but they still had their church, a
minister, and their community. By contrast my massage practice is not a
community for the folks who visit me. It’s a service, even if in some instances
a kind of emotional relationship emerges. Even if a client and I continue to
see one another socially, the relationship without the massage practice will be
changed. Individually they must seek massage services. I am not leaving them in
someone else’s care, and I am not leaving Denver. Since I have never done
anything like this before, it feels different.
This made sense to Sue and gave her
more insight into my feelings of pressure and upset. The problem has to do with
schedule—too many things needing resolution in too short a time! RIGHT NOW. Of
course I assume I will survive. I know I will enjoy my trip, and I am looking
forward to the automatic deposits of money into my bank account. Right now I
remind myself how good life is, even for this tired old man. I assured Sue and
myself that I am celebrating my life. I always do. I do so right now with you.
© 17 Dec
2013 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Right Now, by Lewis

[Prologue: I wrote this piece amid the shock and horror of the shooting this past Friday at Arapahoe High School and the first anniversary of the much more lethal event in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. It seemed appropriate for the subject matter because it seems to me that our society must turn its full attention away from deterring acts of terror born of religious intolerance at home or abroad and toward the growing problem and many times more destructive issue of home-grown terrorism and we must do it RIGHT NOW.

As I have mentioned here on more than one occasion in the past, I grew up with guns and hunting. I was good at it. It was an outlet for the anger I felt inside for whatever motivation lie behind it. My victims were birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians and the occasional street lamp. Their sacrifice sated for a few minutes or hours my need to feel that I was nobody to mess with, that I could make an impact, that my anger was something to be respected.

Sometime during my middle school years, I outgrew that emotional deficiency. Some boys don’t. In their teens-to-early-twenties, their hurt and pain overpowers their sense of decency. It is no longer sufficient for them to punish surrogates for their oppression. Their oppressors become their parents, peers, even strangers. Their victims can no more comprehend what’s going inside their heads than the lowly sparrows I brought down by the dozens.

One day, a neighbor saw me shoot out a street light. The police came and took away my pellet gun. My dad had to drive me downtown and sign a release to get my gun back. It was embarrassing. I never attempted something so stupid again. Perhaps the police had the right idea–take the gun out of my hands until a person of responsibility helped me get it back. I can’t help but wonder if society would have been better served if someone had taken my weapon away before my angry rampage got as far as it did.

I write this out of a feeling that–as many times more complex is the problem of mass shootings today–we must seriously consider how we can diminish the odds of something like the Columbine or Aurora massacres from happening again. I will now make such a case.]

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When the only tool you have is a gun, every problem looks like a threat. A gun quickly turns a coward into a drunken cowboy who shoots first and asks questions later. In fact, if you have a gun, you don’t even have to wait for the answers because you’re guaranteed the last word.

I’m sick and tired of hearing the press talk about the “senselessness” of these school shootings. Are they really unable to put two and two together? People do senseless things a million times a second in this country but nobody dies. They knock things over, they kick things, they slam doors, they curse, they stomp around, they pull their hair out, they spit, they foam at the mouth. Sometimes, they may even get what they want…and nobody dies.

But you put a loaded gun in their hand and reason and dialogue and common sensibility goes out the barrel. In the New Town, CT, shooting, Adam Lanza cut down 20 children and six adults, including himself, in about 5 minutes. By the time police arrived, it was all over but the sobbing.

This is not an issue about Second Amendment rights, as the NRA would have us believe. (More on the Second Amendment in a bit.) No, it is about sales of guns and the profitability of the gun manufacturing industry of which the NRA is a vital part. Look at the front page of Friday’s Post and tell me that the horror and pain on that teenage girl’s face is the price we have to pay so that every paranoid gun-hugging freak out there in our once-admired nation can own as much fire-power as his delusional mind can conjure up. I don’t believe it, not for an instant. No, this is a battle between a society that values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the most destructive, greedy, and self-serving industry that calls itself a champion of liberty.

Quoting Tom Diaz’s brilliant new book, The Last Gun, “An American’s chances of being killed in an automobile accident are about one in 7,000 or 8,000 per year; of being a victim of homicide, about one in 22,000 per year; and of being killed by a terrorist, about one in 3.5 million per year.” Yet, over the decade between

September 2001 and September 2011, American taxpayers have spent over $1.3 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and homeland security, while backtracking on the issue of freedom from domestic terrorist threats birthed by Second Amendment demagogues.

The “Oligarchy of Five” sitting on the current U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as if the first half doesn’t exist. This is odd for a bunch of “strict constructionists”. True, the language is quaint and the syntax poorly constructed. “Four-score-and seven years ago” is also quaint but we still quote that part of the Gettysburg Address.

Still, the Second Amendment follows the First and even the right of free speech has been found to be limited. A citizen is not allowed to shout “fire” in a crowded theater. (The way things are today, one might be on more constitutional grounds yelling, “open fire”.) Neither can you slander, libel, incite violence, obstruct justice, or disrupt the peace. Nevertheless, the NRA argues–successfully, if recent trends are any indication–that citizens should be allowed to “keep and bear [any and all] arms”, including weapons designed for the military.

Why the need for so much firepower? Well, in a vast number of instances among NRA members, it’s for protection from the very government that wrote the Constitution. So, in essence, the Supreme Court–one of the three co-equal branches of government–has ruled that the Police Power of that same government does not have the right to bar modern-day, would-be Enemies of Democracy from owning the most lethal hand-held weapons on the face of the earth. Is that not the very epitome of insanity?

It seems that the real enemy is not as likely to be found wearing a long robe so much as a bullet-proof vest or a backpack. The man who kills me is more likely to look like my son than a foreigner. Just because it’s hard to pick out the real enemy, does not mean that we have to throw up our hands and say, “Well, that was really a tragic occurrence. Let us pray for the families of those dead and those lucky enough to still be alive. May it never happen again.” No, we need to change the way we look at the gun problem and we need to do it RIGHT NOW.

16 December 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Right Now by Gillian

Right now, I could die happy. We don’t exactly control, at least consciously, what thoughts and feelings flit into our psyches and this came unbidden into my head as we drove east on California Highway 78, leaving San Marcos where Betsy and I had been married a couple of hours earlier. First the thought flooded me with emotion, but then it seemed a strange reaction when I thought about it. Why DIE happy? Shouldn’t it be, live happily ever after? Nevertheless, that is what I thought and felt at that moment, and much of it is still with me. Maybe age has something to do with it: it affects most things. I’m not a twenty-one year old running off to get married, but a seventy-one year old who has waited 26 years to marry the love of her life.

Right now, as we head at top speed into the Holiday Season, I’m sure I shouldn’t have any thoughts of death in my head. I should have visions of birth and rebirth and focus on how wonderful life is. Which it is; at least mine is, and it’s the only one I am qualified to discuss. And for the wonder of my life I am most sincerely thankful, and more grateful still for my awareness of that wonder. Many many people in this world do not live wonderful lives, for many many reasons. But others do live, are living, wonderful lives and do not know it. How sad is that? All those, many of them already rich, who constantly seek more and yet more money, and all that it will buy. They are stuck with this illusion of some future wonderful life which will magically be available if they get that extra car or if they buy a bigger house or if that multi-million dollar bonus comes through. “When the terrible ifs accumulate,” Winston Churchill once warned, disaster looms.

And speaking of a wonderful life, the movie will be on TV several times in the next couple of weeks, I’m sure. I used to watch it faithfully every Christmas, first with my kids and then without them. Now I am over seventy and have reached the stage that I can lip sync every word, it has rather lost it’s appeal. Familiarity has bred, not contempt, but perhaps a little boredom. But both “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “A Christmas Carol,” in it’s many movie iterations, present the same theme; accepting the reality that you have, right now, without the addition of one single thing, a wonderful life. And perhaps, then, it does make sense to feel that you can now die happy. After all, if you have lived a wonderful life, what more can you possibly want?

I haven’t always known that my life was wonderful. Being GLBT in an overwhelmingly straight world tends to skew somewhat your view of your life and yourself. But many years ago I turned a huge corner on that. It suddenly came to me one day, as unexpectedly as the blazing newsflash, “Now I Can Die Happy.” Not only was I, at that moment, OK with being gay, but much more I was actually grateful for it. And I have been ever since. Why? Perhaps you ask, or perhaps you have no need to. Well, right now is the perfect example. Can you take this Monday story telling group that we so value, and put it into a traditional straight setting? I can’t.

Right now, a friend of ours and her partner are meeting with Hospice. She has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Will she, after a time of adjustment, be able to feel she can die happy? I wish her that kind of peace, but it’s not easy to “go … gently into that good night,” as Dylan Thomas expressed it. We want to kick and fight and scream. It’s fine for me to have that overwhelming sensation of being ready to die happy when I’m not, as far as I know, facing death in the immediate future. Last year I had just enough of a cancer scare to make me realize that, right now, any sentence of death would be very hard to face with equanimity, whatever inspiration might have hit me on that California highway.

I guess it’s one of life’s paradoxes. When our lives are the best they have ever been, we are able to feel that right now we could die happy. Like quitting while you’re at the top of your game. But in truth I want to enjoy my wonderful life a little longer. I think perhaps I could die happy, but preferably not right now!

© December 2013

About
the Author


I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Right Now by Will Stanton

From time to time, I have heard the phrase, “You think too much.” That probably applies to me. I’m a thinky type of person. Of course, the type of thinking one does determines whether or not the thinking is “too much.” We often waste too much time with non-productive thinking. I’m good at that; I’ve had lots of experience with it.

Opposed to that, I’m reminded by a recent news story about the brilliant fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka who spent so much time in the Johns Hopkins lab that he often slept on a cot, and he even missed his own birthday. All his thinking resulted in his discovering a new, fast way of detecting pancreatic cancer. He won the youth-achievement Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award along with $75,000. So, all that thinking resulted in something truly worthwhile. His efforts and thinking were in the right-now.

I suppose that I can admit to having an “artist’s nature,” as opposed to a “scientist’s nature.” Dreamy minds may not be the best for focusing on the right-now.

Having been part of Story Time for going on three years, I have had ample opportunity to avoid thinking about the right-now. Instead, I have allowed my mind to wander back several decades to my youth, dredging up old memories, even in fine detail, and spending time writing them down to share with the other members of the group. I’m afraid that I also have engaged too frequently in thinking back in time and wondering what I might have done differently, what if circumstances had been different, how could my life have been different. So, I probably have spent far too much time in the past, not in the right-now.

Also,I had the habit for many years of wondering about the future, not necessarily making pragmatic plans to carry out, but rather, less organized musings about who I wanted to be when I grew up. I probably continued doing that even through mid-life, which does not make very much sense. Time seems to have passed by quickly, and I definitely am way beyond the point where I should be wondering about what I want to be when I grow up. All that wondering was not in the right-now, either.

I always have accused myself of being a slow learner, but it’s beginning to dawn on me that concentrating upon the right-now throughout my life most likely would have been much more productive. Also, living in the moment can prove to be more enjoyable and satisfying. I’m sure that’s true with some humans, but I’ve seen that frequently with dogs.

I realize that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks; but in my case, I suppose living in the right-now probably is a skill I need to practice. So for right-now, I’m going to enjoy listening to the other members’ stories, and I’ll put off until later debating whether or not after Story Time I want to go across the street to get a cup of coffee and a fresh-baked cookie.

© 12 December 2013

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Right Now by Betsy

If there is nothing else that I have learned over the years, I have learned this: be present and focus on the moment, the RIGHT NOW, because it really is all there is. It is all that we have in reality. The past is made up of memories, and memories are, after all, a product of one’s mind. As for the future: it is unknown and thoughts of the future are also a product of the mind.

We have a whole lot of ”right nows” happening all the time in succession. By the time I read this, what I am doing right now will be a memory; that is, a vision I create in my mind.

Right now is the most important time of my life. When I contemplate this I realize that right now IS all that is real. So why not make the most of it.

In a recent Monday afternoon story called My Favorite Place I wrote: my favorite place is wherever I am at the moment. Right now my favorite place is here, trying to sort out my thoughts and put them down on paper so you all can get some understanding of what I am trying to say.

Have you ever been in a place where you wanted desperately to capture the moment and make it last forever, such as a place of indescribable beauty and awe such as the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. Today’s cameras help to do that and make it possible to take home a reminder of that place. But what I cannot take home with me is how it FELT to experience the incredible beauty of the canyon and that awesome power of the falls. The memory is not the same as the experience itself. EkhartTolle speaks of being at one with the universe. Surrounded by incredible natural beauty and power and really taking in the feeling and the peace that it engenders is perhaps the closest I will ever be in my current human form to that connection. This can only happen in the right now.

How many of us have ever completely tormented ourselves over something that happened in the past–a few minutes ago or long ago. Or something bad happens a few minutes ago or long ago and we cannot let go of it. We go over and over and over it in our minds. Both past and future are constructs of the mind, says Tolle. Only the now is real. I like the concept. But yet being human I am flawed. My fragile ego was injured, for example, when I was inadvertently left off a groups’ luncheon e-mail list. A group of which I am a long time member. Did someone deliberately forget me. So I started in with the tapes going round and round in my head. “Why was I ignored? Who did it? Does someone hate me? Why does she hate me? Oh! For Heaven’s sake, Betsy, let it go. It was a simple mistake.” Focusing on the right now has helped me to better manage my vulnerability in such situations. Keeps me grounded in reality.

We all have known people who “live” in the past or “live”” in the future. I can understand how a person could fall into this behavior. When I retired from my job, for an instant I panicked. “ Who will I be? Maybe I will no longer have an identity. I’ll be a nothing,” etc. etc. Fortunately that thought was only fleeting. I immediately shifted gears, found other activities and interests, and established a new identity as an active retired person–a sports enthusiast, a community volunteer, etc. So for me, adjustment to retirement took only a week or so.

Coming out of the closet I had many moments of doubt about what I was doing at the time. I had left a very comfortable marriage and entered a world of insecurities and unfamiliar territory. I had never really lived alone. At the time it was not easy to find, much less join, a community of which I knew little; and on occasion finding members of that community with whom I could hardly relate. This produced moments of anxiety when I longed for my old familiar, comfortable situation I had left–my old, familiar past. But right now, I then said to myself, I know that past was intolerable and that is why I am doing this. I struggled but coached myself to stay grounded in the present.

During the months and years when I was in that marriage but starting to question whether I should be there, I started living in the future. Talk about having your head in the clouds–imagining what it would be like to be in a relationship with a woman and envisioning life as a lesbian. It seems clear that we all need to plan and to dream at times in our lives. But living one’s life and identifying with the future all the time can be dangerous. Would it not be terrifying to wake up one day and realize you’ve missed out on all the right nows and there are none left.

We do get ourselves into trouble, and we do ourselves a disservice when we anticipate not only that a certain something will happen in the future, but also we envision how we will feel about it. We may be setting ourselves up for disappointment or disillusionment.

When I first came out I had much to learn about life and about people. And that is not because I was young. Well, compared to now I was young. But I was not a youngster. I was in my late forties. Yet I had lots to learn. So I experienced a couple of stormy years and stormy relationships and had many moments of doubt about the steps I had taken to change my life. Yes, I was a lesbian, but was this the life I wanted? At first I had many moments of disillusionment with my new life.

The future is not right now. What we think about the future is a contrivance of our thinking mind and not a reality. Does the future therefore deserve any of our energy in the form of anxiety, concern, worry, trepidation. Or on the positive side does it deserve premature visions of happiness, joy, calm, peace, etc. I do believe it does to some extent. Half the fun of a trip, or a party is the planning of it, right? For me it is. And planning for the future is a necessity, no doubt about it. But planning is a useful action done, when? In the right now. What does not deserve our time and energy is wasted worry and anxiety about the future.

In my dotage I am learning that life requires adjustments, sometimes just fine tuning, other times big changes all along the way. I have recently learned that I am having to cut back on many activities that I don’t want to cut back on. Some fine tuning is necessary. If I stick to the right nows, I should be able to make that adjustment easily and positively. I’m finding that being and staying in the right now helps me to do that. No doubt about it. The NOW is a good place to be.
So, what am I doing right now? I am getting ready for another right now.

December 16, 2013

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.