The Same Room, The Same Moment

You can only be in one room at a time. You can only expe­ri­ence one moment at a time. Stay in the room. Stay in the moment. When you go to another room or another moment, stay there too. Doing so will do won­ders for your san­ity.
This lit­tle bit of wis­dom is some­thing I remind myself and oth­ers of on a reg­u­lar basis. Anx­i­ety has to do with being some­where else other than where you are. Look around the room. That is all you have to deal with at this moment. The peo­ple in the room with you are the only ones that are actu­ally real. They are part of your imme­di­ate con­text. Talk to them. Lis­ten to them. Be there with them with all of your aware­ness.
Stay where you are while you are there. Past and future are illu­sory. They are ele­ments of the imag­i­na­tion. A brief ref­er­ence in either direc­tion is suf­fi­cient on most occa­sions, but being stuck in either place can leave peo­ple around you emo­tion­ally stranded. Con­ver­sa­tions are shared expe­ri­ences of and in the imme­di­ate.
I am con­vinced that Jesus worked to bring peo­ple back into the moment — away from their past wounds and away from their future fears. If I can imag­ine what it would be like to have a con­ver­sa­tion with him, I am bet­ting it would be one in which you would have his full atten­tion. The con­ver­sa­tion would be rel­e­vant. It is unlikely that you would hear him in some sort of harangue or obses­sion about some past injus­tice. He would be right there with you. Any­thing about the past or future would con­cern you and your spir­i­tual wel­fare.
Some rooms and moments are more pleas­ant than oth­ers. It pays not to get trapped in the mis­er­able ones. It is also impor­tant not to spread them around. Always come back to the present. It is the only real expe­ri­ence cre­ation offers. Ver­bal inti­macy is a rare thing these days, but it is sought after in the form of a multi-billion dol­lar coun­sel­ing indus­try. We want to be with some­one that can truly be with us in the moment and in the same room. We yearn for authen­tic con­nec­tion.
Be there for oth­ers and teach them how to be there for you too. Both of you will heal a little.