The next right thing.

I have often in my life been told to just do “the next right thing”. This helped me in some ways but in other ways created a space in my head where I was slowly training myself to be more concerned with the future and less concerned with what was happening in the present moment. I would spend hours thinking and developing anxiety over what the “next right thing” would be. In a way it created a way for me to escape from the present uncomfortable moment. For example (Right now I am doing the wrong thing but I’ll do the next right thing) instead of dealing with the right then and now “thing”. Does that make sense? I was never learning how to deal with the wrong things I was doing, just try and figure out what the next right thing was.

So much of our lives are fluid and yet we try and create stability out of transience. Hence why breaking up your life into blocks of moments would make sense but may not completely be helpful. When we compartmentalize these moments into good, bad, great, ugly, ect, we never learn how to see the impermanence in the nature of life. We live from one moment to the next without seeing or feeling the grey areas in between the black and white moments.

Instead of saying “what is the next right thing”? can I stop and say wait am I doing the right thing currently and can I let the next right thing just happen without planning for it? Can I stop living in boxes and allow my life to be fluid, and let go of the need to control every little scenario?