During my teenage years, my friend-sister and I watched a comedy play over and over on Youtube. Until today, we know all the lines and still chat about it.

My friend and I probably won’t have the opportunity again to sit on the couch on a Tuesday afternoon and watch the play. This could be a melancholy text, but it is not. We are not interested in reviving the past.

I was living in the present then, but it wasn’t always like that. For many years, I tended to put off happiness for later. Maybe because I thought I didn’t deserve to be happy, perhaps because I thought, at that moment, I wasn’t fulfilling the requirements. As if happiness were a sticker album I was unable to complete.

I thought happiness would come later

Not meeting all the requirements on my “happiness list” was like getting stuck in a never-ending cycle. I used to live by the motto, “when I have this, I will be happy.” It was an anxiety engine. I understood that I had created an impossible list, pressured by social standards. And that my tendency to postpone happiness comes from this list.

I will make my point more clearly with an example. Millions of women worldwide are convinced that they can only wear a bikini and enjoy summer when they are “slim.” However, while looking for the “ideal body,” we are not living the current summer.

The “minimum required for happiness” varies depending on age, job, economic situation, city, etc. I should put everything in quotation marks because I am dealing with many layers of external impositions that miss the central element of the social equation: the person.

Last weekend, we celebrated LGBTQ+ pride in New York City. I managed to be present at all the events I wanted to attend. Saturday, I went to Dyke March alone. It felt a little weird, but it was there. Sunday, under an 86ºF sun, I walked along with the Queer Liberation March. My idea was to have a few drinks afterward, but the heat was intense. So I decided to listen to my body and go home. I was happy during the event, facilitating the decision to end the program sooner.

As an exchange student, I had friends who went out every day. Our teacher said the students knew more about the city than he did. I wasn’t that adventurous. I didn’t have much money to spend, and I preferred to live “like a local,” thinking that my time there was unlimited.

To live in the present is to be at peace in the future

Even today, I save places “to go” on my phone as I walk on the streets, shop windows or pass by lovely restaurants. The intention of having a “want to go” list is good, but life is now, not later.

I can’t do everything available in New York City, but it’s possible to have more moments in the “I did” box than in the “I want to do” box. And I don’t have to try so hard to live in the present. It is enough to walk into the stores, get more interested in the culture where I live, talk to salespeople, and ask questions.

Fifteen years ago, my friend-sister and I didn’t want to save the play to watch at special times. And we were so happy that nostalgia today, instead of being an escape, cuddles our chats with jokes sent on Tuesday afternoons.

We don’t know when we’ll have the next opportunity to do what we’re doing now. And I understand that enjoying the present is nicer than imagining what it would be like to live, at that moment, if I had (insert your wish list here)…