Living Today.
You are only your present self.
I have spent more time than I care to admit living in days that already happened or days that haven’t arrived yet. Standing at the wheel thinking about the pot I ruined last week or worrying about whether the kiln build will be done before the snow comes or wondering what would have happened if I had started the pottery five years earlier. None of that centers clay. None of that throws a pot. The wheel is turning right now and the clay is moving right now, and if my mind is somewhere else the pot knows it before I do.
Counterfactuals are comfortable because they cost nothing to think about. What if I had bought the solar panels last year when they were cheaper. What if I had stayed with that glaze recipe instead of switching. What if the show had gone differently or the firing had been a half cone hotter or I had said yes instead of no to that opportunity three years ago. You can run those scenarios all afternoon and feel like you’re working something out, but when you look up the studio is exactly the way you left it and nothing has moved.
The same goes for the future that hasn’t happened. What if energy prices double. What if the factory closes. What if the kiln doesn’t draw the way I planned. These are real concerns and I would be lying if I said they didn’t cross my mind on a night shift. But living inside them full time turns every day into a dress rehearsal for something that may never happen, and meanwhile the actual day, the one with clay, sunlight, and hours in it, goes by unused.
You are only your present self. That is the part I keep having to relearn. The version of me that made mistakes last year is not the one standing here today. The version of me that might face problems next winter is not the one at the wheel right now. I am this version, the one with these hands and this amount of energy and this particular list of things that can be done today. That is who gets to decide what happens next. Not the past version who got it wrong. Not the future version who might have to deal with something difficult. This one. Right now.
You get to pick your future. For sure not all of it. The factory schedule and the weather and the price of propane are not up to me. But the choices within those constraints are mine. I get to decide whether today goes to the kiln or the rabbit hole. I get to decide whether this evening is spent worrying about what might happen in the future or making pots that will be ready for the fall shows when they arrive. The constraints are fixed, but the choices inside them are not.
I have wasted good studio days playing out worst-case scenarios that never came true and best-case fantasies that never came either. Both of them stole time from the only version of the day that was real. The present one. The one where the clay is sitting on the wedging table and the kiln is out in the yard and the wheel is plugged in and ready. This is the day. This is the self. Everything else is a story I am telling myself instead of doing the work.
If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have spent less of it inside my own head running scenarios and more of it inside the studio throwing clay.
Things I am grateful for: The present moment that is still available to me.
If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,654 days left.
Originally published at Creek Road Pottery
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Well said. We all only have today.