Why you should always be living your best life today | #THINKINGHUES
Reflections on why preparing for your future might not always be the best approach.
I assume most of you reading this, like myself, progressed through a similar educational trajectory: kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, and perhaps college or university. From an early age, we’ve been conditioned to focus on the next stage.
Even before kindergarten, nowadays, there are preparatory institutions designed to stimulate young minds and prepare them for formal schooling. With today’s level of heightened and globalised competition, it’s understandable why parents feel compelled to try and create every advantage for their children. The trend of early preparation though seems to start even younger now.
While I am not a parent and can’t comment on the intensity of such pressures, what I’m observing is much more than education— it’s the fact that throughout our lives, we’ve been programmed to always think ahead.
Yet, what this future mindset means is we’re spending most, if not all, of our energy preparing for an uncertain future. What we might miss is if we invest too much of ourselves only towards an unpredictable future, we risk expending all our attention, efforts, and time on a future that’s not guaranteed while also neglecting everything that’s already in front of us— the present, which is the only moment we can be certain of.
