Present Energy

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Before OA I never lived my life for today. I spent all my time rehashing the past or dreaming about the future. No wonder my life was in such bad shape: It was as if I was only existing through today to get to that great tomorrow. But the miserable truth is that tomorrow never comes. When I wake up in the morning it is today, never tomorrow. Also, no matter how hard I reflected on the past, replaying it a hundred different ways, it was always the past and it never changed. I never woke up in yesterday with the option to make different choices. The bottom line was that I was spending all my life energy in the two places it couldn’t make any difference and spending no life energy in the one place that could change everything: today. So when I heard the slogan “If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you are peeing on today,” I was shocked, but I also realized it was right on the mark. When I focused only on yesterday or tomorrow, I did something horrible to today. That’s exactly what my life looked like until I got to OA.

OA teaches me that my future is made up of all the todays I live. There is no shortcut to that perfect spot in the future; it can only be reached by living each today in a healthy, loving, respectful, recovered way. Likewise, if I don’t include a particular thing in every today it cannot be part of my future or my past. That means, if I want fun in my life, I need to have some fun in every today. If I want HP in my life, I have to spend some time on that relationship every today.

I am still working on this and expect I will until I die. But thanks to HP, my future and my past are looking brighter every today!

— K.G., Goshen, Indiana USA

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