Pretty much anyone working on themselves and attaining a better attitude towards life and living has heard it: "You need to live in the moment!" or "Live in the now" or "There is no moment but the present."

TLDR: If you want control over your life, learn how to perceive past, present and future objectively and productively.

These fluffy feelgood-phrases also permeate a lot of TRP-space and I want to use this post to call it out for what it is: Fluffy, bluepill, vanilla, mainstream philosophy.

They barely scratch the surface of what is called "maladaptive time perspective".https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29694321/

People with maladaptive time perspectives are unable to productively relate the past, the present and the future to one another. They are usually stuck on a certain perspective of time. They might be dwelling on their ex. They might be living in an ever-hedonistic string of nows, constisting of porn, videogames and weed. Or they may be daydreaming about their future as shredded Chads plowing their way through rows and rows of women.

And while most people can spot and adress this problem as long as it is pronounced, they miss the underlying issue:

Inflexibility when percepting time. They simply can not put themselves in the shoes of their future, present or past self.

While it is true that, as the Buddha said, the past is just a memory and the future just a fantasy - both memory and fantasy are shaped by reality. And those who are able to connect the dots control their fate. Their lives feel like an unreal onslaught of fleeting feelings, out of their control, they themselves unable to do anything about it.

Being able to correctly perceive and productively perceive past and present events is one of the most critical abilities of your psyche - along with logic, critical thinking, creativity, frame and emotional intelligence.

So - how can one learn to build a productive relationship with past, present and future?

One way is meditation. Most styles of meditation focus on just breathing in the present moment. That is one way to learn how to deal with the present. But you can do the same thing with the past: Just pick a memory and repeatedly play the same 10 seconds over and over again. Or do the same with a future - maybe with a future worry: Visualize it, play it through time and time again until you reach calm.

Once your vision is no longer clouded by vapid emotions, you can dive further and further into each direction - connecting the dots along the way and letting the emotions pass by until you reach calm.