Now and Then

 How is it that our pets seem to know exactly when to be in the wrong place at the right time? The cat wants attention but you are busily trying to get ready for work. You put your morning tea into the microwave and the phone rings unexpectedly. It’s your sister and she wants to talk about the upcoming surprise anniversary party being planned for your parents. You’re annoyed at this — she should know that it’s the wrong time. You constrain yourself from scolding her, knowing this will only prolong the conversation. You hear your beloved pet whimper a “meow” from the floor and see her out of the corner of your eye. But you’re running out of time. You promise to call your sister from work later, and get her off the phone. Now where are the car keys? You remember that you put them in your coat pocket when you got home from the store last evening so you could bring the recycle can back in from the street where the trash man tossed it on his morning scoot through town. You go to the coat rack, reach in the right hand pocket and there they are. Just then the microwave rings out. You put your coat on, and fix your tea to take with you. You realize that this is not your usual morning routine, but you’re rushed for time. And then you remember that you forgot to check your email, and your boss has been harping about personal use of work computers. You quickly run in the bedroom and there’s the cat, on your comfortable computer chair. You pick her up and snuggle her for a moment, amazed at how, no matter what kind of chaos is happening in your day, she always knows how to get what she wants from you. And you wish you knew her secret so you could try it on your sister and the other people in your life.
I finally saw a segment from “The Dog Whisperer,” a series on the National Geographic Channel about the amazingly successful canine behavior specialist Cesar Milan. On this particular episode he was able to, with the help of his own two young sons, get an Australian shepherd over its long embedded fear of children in an incredibly short amount of time. He claims the key to connecting with our pets is to “live in the now.” And in the above hypothetical, that’s Kitty’s secret.
Anything that keeps time consists of two basic components: a modulator — something that makes a repeated motion at a regular interval — and a counter. The basic interval the work-a-day world relies on is the second, but atomic clocks now divide this interval into millions of parts called nano seconds, useful in quantum science. Your boss may not be counting time in nano seconds yet, but minutes on the clock do count, to say nothing of hours and days. But to Kitty, it’s just a useless plastic disc you hung over the sink and some folded paper on the wall you make marks on and flip over once in a while.
Nothing exists in the past or the future — there is only the now. This we know. If this is true it should be eminently easy to live in the now. But it is actually the most difficult thing there is for us. In fact, it is the “now” that we are working so hard every day to keep away from us. Homeless people live in the “now“. The tornadoes that hit central Florida last week were deliverers of the “now” to those unfortunate people. Thousands in Indonesia are still caught in the “now” that the tsunami swept over them the day after Christmas two years ago.
We give up this daily “now” in hopes of a more fulfilling, safe and healthy one this weekend, next month or next summer. But, in my experience, at least, it doesn’t really work that way. The best “now’ moments can no more be planned than can the tragic ones. They just “happen“, too. We live here in the Western World, working so hard all week long avoiding what we perceive as what’s bad about the “now”. Maybe the “Now” in this scenario has to be like Kitty, following us and watching us intently and waiting for the right moment in the patterns we repeat every day to surprise us with something good.