We mostly all live in a large part in the future, the elusive future, that upon some ill-appointed day holds for us a disappointing date with … well, you fill in your own notion of doom.

Yet, if we did not cast our sights upon tomorrow, if, instead, we chose only the very now to live, breathe, and move in, could we ever muster the enthusiasm, frolic in  the anticipation, or conjure the imagination to enjoy any date at all?

Take imminent birthdays, soon-to-be anniversaries, upcoming sports playoff events, or property rights to killer concert tickets.  The meaning, significance, “going-to-live-for” factor of any projected date at all disappears for those living only in the now.  And, yes, that special date with doom also disappears for those living in the moment.  Hence, the most accomplished masters of the immediate, the Zen masters themselves, never died but moved mysteriously and nirvanically beyond death through the discipline of now-focused heightened awareness.

But the Zen masters also never knew the stirrings of passion that approach, slam, and overwhelm a guy in having a hot date, either.  To say “It’s a date.”  with a beautiful girl does make it a date, doesn’t it?  But that’s not the same thing as “being on the date.”  Yet to “have a date” with a hot chick before actually “being on the date” with her is a hell of a lot more than just a calendrical projection.  Just as great foreplay usually precedes great sex, so the lead up, the build-up to a hot date, let’s call it the foredate, often matches with imagined anticipations the actual fun and excitement of the date itself.  We dream our finest dreams in expectation of what may be.  Who gazes upon the sunset and hopes tomorrow’s sunrise not to see?

That is, unless you are so cool.  Are you that cool?  Are you really that cool?  Are you Zen?

This is unfinished.  I’m too close to feeling and so not in the now being just-the-now.