Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Miscarra, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about one of the reasons why we miss our lives.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, so I wrote this post the other day. That said, the belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we're in right now is why we miss our lives.

Notice how that one Latin is for you. This is always one of my more popular Instagram posts. I think there's something about it that really resonates with people that certainly resonated with me, which is why I wrote it.

Most of my teachings come out of personal experience, and I notice when I get into the mentality of privileging one moment over another, especially future moments where I consider the world will be better.

My life will be better. There'll be more joy, less pain, more justice, a better world. It often feels like, yeah, those are the moments worth trying to get to, and that this moment is a means to that future moment.

And this is a fair thing. It makes sense in a certain way. If something is uncomfortable here, we don't like it, and we're perceiving something better in the future, then, yeah, why not push for that?

Well, the thing about that is that that can be a never ending loop where the neuroses that we're conditioning, which is to avoid what is here and seek for something better, we'll just continue to show up for us even when our circumstances change.

And it might not be in the same way, our external world might shift such that life becomes a lot better. We can't dismiss the role of the external world on our well-being.

But how many people do you know have really fulfilling lives, and yet are still looking for something better, still kind of leaning into that future moment?

Part of this is the hedonic treadmill, hedonic adaptation, which is the brain's habituation to certain levels of pleasure and good experience where it habituates and then needs a little bit more.

But this is also a product of not training ourselves to actually be in our lives as they're happening.

And I crafted that Instagram post, that piece of writing, specifically, you know, I didn't say the belief that there is some future moment that is more enjoyable than the one where right now is why we miss our lives.

And that would be different. There's a really good argument to be made for that when it comes to like the certain emotion that we might characterize a moment that, yeah, there's going to be future moments that might be a lot more enjoyable, a lot more pleasant, a lot more good.

But the way this was crafted, the belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence, you know, that's the one that is interesting to me, because presence is not just about being in the good moments.

It's about being in your life and recognizing that each moment of your life has the capacity to expand you, to offer something, even the most difficult moments.

And we could numb, turn away, put our heads down and try to get through it, but right then that's the recipe for waking up one day in our life, passing us.

And also not getting to experience the full range of the human experience, which is again, controversial and understandably so because there are a lot of moments in life that are just deeply, deeply painful.

And there's a very good argument for just saying, yeah, I just don't want to be there at all. And I'm not trying to find the positive in it.

I don't want to make any meaning out of it, and I don't need to be present for it for the sake of expanding.

We could see how that relationship to this narrative could easily come about and I get it.

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