The most insidious thing about our education system is how it is designed to tell you life is what comes after your schooling decades. It is what arrives after the bucket on your head has been filled with all the necessary information. That the package that is you that‘s being prepared will only find purpose and profit once it’s tossed off the education treadmill.

And this sets up for a life where we are expecting it to happen later, not now. In classrooms, we hear “you’ll need this for college” and in college “you’ll need this for your career.” This moment is sacrificed for a future that some claim to know, but no one really does.

And so many of us feel this. I’ve done my bit, gotten my degrees, jumped through the hoops. What now? Where is my life? Well, it was right there, in the here and now, all along. And we were taught to ignore it, reject it, sacrifice it.

Don’t wait. Yes, you want to tend to your future self and temper the impulses of your present self. But that is not the same as sacrificing your present. Nothing is more real or more beautiful. Inhale it, experience it.

Don’t scroll away in listlessness waiting for that moment to arrive. It is here. It is now.