Answer #3- Be in the Present

This is a tough one as we get older. Sometimes life seems overwhelming and confusing, changing faster than we can process. We barely get used to one gadget and another comes along to replace it. We gaze at faces on celebrity magazines at the grocery checkout and wonder who in the world these people are. (Don't worry, it's just a Kardashian, or someone from that Bachelor show. Not worth your bother). And we find ourselves dismissing the young and their tastes with the old "well back in my day we listened to GOOD music", etc.....My parents said the same thing to me when defending the Glenn Miller band against the onslaught of rock and roll. Sometimes it's cozier to watch reruns of The Andy Griffith Show or to make your house a shrine to Seventies wood paneling. (sorry for dragging you into this, Mum), but being in the present moment means we are not living in regret or nostalgia for things that can't return, or in anxiety and fretfulness about a future event that might not occur.

OK, maybe Mr. T above had a right to be concerned.......
I used to lie awake at night worrying about all sorts of possibilities, both personal and on the earth in general. Ok, I still do that sometimes but now I can give myself the talk. Breathe in breathe out. You are lying in bed, in your house. You can hear your husband and dog breathing peacefully. The wind chimes are jangling outside. A train sounds in the distance. At this moment all is well. You can have chocolate for breakfast if you want.
Except I'm worried about that giant plastic island in the Pacific the size of Texas. Is anyone else worried about that?

A lot of it is turning into a gelatinous soup and being eaten by fish, which are then eaten by us. Just thought you'd like to know next time you toss out that plastic water bottle.
Being present in the present also means living through the not-so-nice times and just soldiering on. There is no going around pain and suffering and loss, there is just going through. Besides, most of our nostalgia for the past is based on our ability to savor the good memories and keep them alive, and to sort of gloss over the bad memories and events or actually delete them from our brains. They are inventing a drug for that, by the way, that erases your worst traumas ( see the film, 'The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' to decide if you would swallow that pill)
Do I want to live in the Sixties again? Sure, I was young and reasonably attractive and weighed less and had long, silky hair, and loved the Beatles, but I was also moody, isolated, neurotic, and self-absorbed.  (If you've seen the movie, The Breakfast Club, I was Ali Sheedy but with better hair and not quite so dramatic.) And then there was all that national conflict: Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, assassinations, bitter political divisions (well, some things never change).

So no, I don't want to go back in time, even to the time when my children were little and adorable and I loved being Mommy.

Look at those faces...:-)  Sigh. Wait, I'm drifting into the past. That's OK. I am also in the present typing at my computer. And that asteroid hasn't hit earth yet. But come on. We need to do something about that plastic island.