At conferences and long meetings where I am simply part of the audience, I often get a bit restless. I feel I am wasting my time, the speakers are not very interesting and I could have been doing something much better right about now. What happens then is that I start to think about things that happened in the past or things that can or should happen in the future. The problem is that the things that already happened are immutable and the things that might happen in the future have not yet happened and are consequently equally hard to influence. It is hard to internalize this, but the only time we truly have is now. So, rather than being grumpy about the moment and allowing our brains to slide into the past or the future, we are better off keeping our attention on what is happening right now and to enjoy it. It’s not like by being grumpy about a situation, you are going to be able to get your time back. The Buddhists encourage us to live in the now as this is the only moment you own. And I guess they’re right …