The Power of Now

Every once in a while people get intrived in a genre of books that won't go away. I've managed to steer clear from a recent wave of Happiness self love books.

Within the same week, two people I trust suggested I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I must really need it. I started and restarted the book three times and could never get past page 17. The words made sense, but my body rejects the ideas. Why would anyone want to not live in the past and look forward to events in the future?
It is a difficult book to read if you are not looking for enlightenment, or if for the moment you are in fact at peace.

We romanticise the struggle, my friend Philippe pointed out. I like that I'm twitchy and neorotic and destructive and manic. If I didn't have these struggles I would just be in blissful complicity.

we trade sleepless nights and our health for the pursuit of life, not to live in the NOW or in the pursuit of happiness. My professor asked me what I wanted out of life at age 19. I said happiness. And yes, that is the end game, but I don't want to be happy right now. Why should I be happy? I want so much more from life, and in its pursuit, there will be sleepless nights, heartbreaks, disappointments and self-hate. That's what makes us better I believe.

If you are in contentment, what's left to achieve? Why not wrap up life and call it a day?

So unhappiness, is the pursuit of happiness. Struggle is the path of enlightenment.

I decided to go back to a stage when I was first thirsty for understanding life. Right before I graduated from high school. Two movies did it for me; Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty and Ben Stiller's Reality Bites. I decided to do movie night and relive my hopes and dreams of 1994.

I'm scared that I will not be loved. But then I realise all this struggle will make it all worth while when it does happen.