This isn’t just a trial run.

The other day I went for a little boat ride. There’s a small lake near the school where I teach, and for only a few bucks you can take a little motor boat out onto the lake for a while. I decided during a long lunch break to do just that. I thought it would be a nice place to relax, meditate, and read for a while.

(I was at first reluctant to do it, and I’m not sure why. The only explanation I can come up with is that it seemed to good to be true. People don’t just take boats out into the middle of a lake to read a book during their workday, do they? Luckily, the voice in my head–the same voice that convinced me to move to China in the first place–reminded me that if you spend your whole life doing what other people have done you’re only going to have experiences that other people have had.)

What makes this worth writing about is that for the first ten minutes or so, while I tooled around on the water and explored the perimeter of the lake, just kind of taking it all in, I couldn’t stop thinking about much fun it would be to be on a boat out on a lake somewhere.

No, you’re not missing something. I was in a boat, on a lake, thinking about how much I’d like to be in a boat on a lake. Taking the boat ride was so appealing to me in the first place because I love being in boats on the water. If I could live permanently in one, like the Mariner from Waterworld, I would. So while I was driving around, I was just thinking to myself things like, “Man, I love boats so much. It would be so cool to really be on a boat sometime!” It was as if the experience I was actually having was just a reminder of an experience that I wanted to have.

I wasn’t allowing myself to be present and actually appreciate what was happening. Instead I was comparing it to some future state of things, like it was a trial run or something. Luckily I recognized this fairly quickly and was able to spend another hour or so enjoying where I was and what I was doing.

It’s just a reminder to me of how often we get so caught up in our plans for the future, caught up in our expectations and–more often–our desires, that we are completely oblivious to what we have right where we are. We can spend our whole lives pining for more money, or more freedom, or more friends, and completely forget to appreciate that we already have more money (than we used to), more freedom (than we used to), and more friends (than we used to).

In a sense, we both already have those things and will never have those things. You will never have more money, because you will always have as much money as you have right now. It can never be more than it is. You will never have a better job, because it will always be the job you have right now.

Something can’t be more than it is, and it always only is.

This is something I struggle with often, even as I grow to be more mindful and present. There is still this ever-present sense that someday things will be “better,” and all my efforts today are working towards that goal. Don’t get me wrong, we have to plan for the future and it’s good to work towards a goal. I have managed to achieve more personal transformation in the last 6 months than I ever thought possible because I gave myself some goals and worked towards them every single day. But we also can’t lose sight of what we have right now. Each time I sit down to write, I try not to think about how far I have to go or how far I’ve come. I try to only think about what I have to do right now, and when it’s done–when my writing is done for the day–I think about what I have accomplished today.

In other words, I recognize the state of things as they are now instead of ignoring the present moment for some idealized future. I don’t get so caught up in my dream of being on a boat someday that I fail to recognize that I am on a boat today.