Live in the Now: The Poisoned Mantra of a Forgetful Age

They tell us to “live in the now.”
Whispered in yoga studios, stitched onto throw pillows, echoed in endless reels and reels of shallow wisdom. It’s the gospel of a world desperate to escape itself.

The present has become our sanctuary and our prison. A glowing distraction, sold to us like a miracle cure—detached from consequence, devoid of memory. But this worship of the moment is not liberation. It is erasure. And it is costing us more than we dare admit.

Because to live only in the now is to sever the lifeline that connects us to meaning. And when that thread snaps, we drift. And we forget. And in our forgetting, we begin to rot.

The Cult of Now

There was a time when living in the now was a radical act. A spiritual recalibration. The Stoics spoke of presence as a weapon against chaos. The mystics taught us to sink into the breath to escape the tyranny of ego. Even the Buddhists knew: the now is not a destination—it’s a blade. Used rightly, it cuts through illusion. But left unchecked, it wounds.

Now, it’s nothing more than marketing.
“Live in the moment.”
Buy this. Escape that. Don’t look back. Don’t think ahead. Just be—quiet, numb, consumable. Mindfulness has been hijacked, neutered, monetised. It's no longer a bridge to the divine—it’s a sedative.

And what happens when a culture forgets its past and stops planning for the future? It withers. It repeats its sins. It builds nothing. It becomes disposable, addicted to ephemera, enslaved to dopamine and delay.

The Unravelling

Depression, we’re told, is living in the past. Anxiety—living in the future.
But these are not just mental states. They are symptoms of deeper spiritual wounds. We are haunted because we refuse to honour the dead. We are terrified because we will not prepare for what’s coming.

And so we medicate. We scroll. We chant hollow affirmations like spells we no longer believe in.
But the soul knows when it’s been lied to.

The Cathedral That Time Built

In the shadow of all this impermanence stands a monolith to time itself: La Sagrada Família.
Begun in 1882, still incomplete. Its architect, Gaudí, surrendered his life to a vision he knew he would never see fulfilled. Not a monument to ego, but to endurance. A slow cathedral, unfolding across centuries, whispered into being by the hands of generations.

Every stone is a defiance of “now.”
Every spire is a testament to the long view.
It is art born of sacrifice—of memory, of time, of reverence for both the ancestors and those not yet born.

Had Gaudí followed the modern gospel—had he craved immediacy, results, visibility—nothing would stand there today. Just another sleek, glass monument to profit. A building without a soul.

Fast Politics, Short Memories

Take, by contrast, the phenomenon of Donald Trump—a man who, whatever your political leaning, embodies a distinctly present-tense form of leadership. His presidencies have been marked marked by the rhetoric of disruption and immediate action.

But what happens when the term ends? When the show’s over?

If the focus is only on short-term dominance and instant political wins, then every administration becomes a reset button. There’s no compounding progress—just a series of reactions. What is left behind, then, is noise, not architecture.

A Final Word

So be present, yes. But be present with your eyes open.
Feel the weight of your ancestors in your bones.
Feel the breath of your future self pressing against the veil.
This moment is not all there is. It never was. It never will be.

We do not need another mantra.
We need memory.
We need vision.
We need the courage to build cathedrals we’ll never live to see.