I recently chanced upon this tweet by Naval.

This made me think: What if, instead of life as it is, we were in a state of nothingness? We won’t see anything, won’t hear anything, won’t smell anything, won’t taste anything, won’t feel anything. There’s just nothingness.

Instead, we’re in this state. We can appreciate nature with all our five senses, and enjoy good books, company, and food.

But it also means that we feel discomfort from our five senses. And we face hardship and challenges when reality doesn’t meet expectations. But even so, is it really that bad, compared to nothingness? I think what we have is infinitely better than nothingness.

This perspective makes me more appreciative of my experiences, and the present, hardship and challenges included. The worst experience is still better than nothingness.

If you found this useful, please cite this write-up as:

Yan, Ziyou. (Sep 2020). Appreciating the Present. eugeneyan.com. https://eugeneyan.com/writing/present/.

or

@article{yan2020present,  title   = {Appreciating the Present},  author  = {Yan, Ziyou},  journal = {eugeneyan.com},  year    = {2020},  month   = {Sep},  url     = {https://eugeneyan.com/writing/present/}}