Now.
What? Am I trying to claim that everything is perfect? That the present moment leaves nothing to be desired? That this age represents a universal improvement on all prior ages?
Don’t be daft.
There’s plenty wrong with this moment in time, least of all the fact that nobody knows what the fuck is going on and nobody knows what’s going to happen next. Still, I will maintain until my dying breath that there has never been, nor will there ever be, a better time to be alive.
How can I make this claim so flippantly, so arrogantly? It’s actually very easy. NOW is the best time to be alive for the simple reason that, unlike the past and the future, it actually exists as something other than a figment of our imagination.
NOW is the only time. It wins first place by default.
You see, we can hark for the past all we want. But we can’t go back to it. Equally, we can pray for a rosier future all we want. We can even work hard towards creating it. But we can’t skip straight to it. Only from the here and the now can we think, and act – only in the present moment do we have any power.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.