Maxim
Be present: the here and now is where life happens.
“Our life is short; we must endeavour to gain the present time with best discretion and justice.”
Stoicism · Classical (200 BCE – 600 CE)
Translation: public-domain translation (Casaubon)
The past has gone and the future has not arrived. The present moment is the only place we can actually live, act and enjoy.
Related expressions
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
— Alan Watts, The Essential Alan Watts (Celestial Arts, Berkeley), reissue of The Essence of Alan Watts (1977); checked in the Internet Archive scan of that edition. The 1977 Millbrae edition reads "realize that it is play"Watch on YouTube (0:36–1:01) ↗Spoken as a close paraphrase“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Watch on YouTube: Tim Keller: Peace, Overcoming Anxiety ↗Timothy Keller preaches on overcoming anxiety“Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.”
“The present alone is true and actual; it is the only time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively.”
“Past and future obviously have no reality of their own.”
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997), ch. 3, p. 36 per Wikiquote (chapter and page not checked); wording checked in the Internet Archive scan of the New World Library edition (1999)Echoes Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims: “The present alone is true and actual”Watch on YouTube: Sam Harris with Chris Williamson ↗Sam Harris on death and the present moment (Modern Wisdom)
Score
Moral Rank 75.9 · Evidence E = 16.99
E = ln(1+3.63) + √3.07 + 3·3.07 + 1.5·3 = 16.99