The PRESENT...What a GIFT!?: The Stark REALITY of Living in the NOW!

She was playing the game she loved, Basketball, when it happened: ALL the memories of her 19 years were wiped completely away in an instant! She'd run into another player, hitting her head, while practicing at Walla Walla (Washington) Community College.

There was no bleeding, nothing. But in that instance...Kayla Hutcheson's past was GONE!

"She couldn't remember who she was, what her dad's name was..." says one of her friends and teammates. "It kept getting worse."

Now, Kayla Hutcheson, the 19-year-old student in Walla Walla, Washington, lives a "day at a time....living in the ONLY time she knows, the PRESENT," reports Neal Karlinson of abc News.


I heard this piece during this past week, and thought: ONLY know the PRESENT!?Isn't this what Eckhart Tolle in his book, "The Power of NOW", is telling us to do? isn't that what all other "wise men" TELL us to do: "Live in the NOW...The Present!"


These wise people now have a TEXT BOOK CASE at hand, and I hope they study it...and see whether all their years of teaching and preaching about living in the ONLY moment that matters, the NOW, really is the way to live.


Sadly, though, for Kayla Hutcheson, who is a medical mystery to doctors, each day is a day she's hoping that her memory DOES return.

When I told Kayla Hutcheson's story to a group of my students around the same age, one of them said, "I wish that's ALL I could remember!"

But is it?

Do you really, really, want to live ONLY in the NOW moment? Yes, you may want to FOCUS on what's happening then...as that's ALL we can control. But would you really want to wipe away the moments, the past experiences, that got you HERE...NOW?

That's the thing about all the theories and proposition and speculation and suggestions: LIVING the reality of these TRUTHS often is much more challenging than anyone bargained! Quite honestly, given a choice, NONE of us would want to live without a past and, certainly, without SOME ROADMAP, some plan, for our future.

That is the REALITY...that is the TRUTH!


Our past is our history.

It tells the story of our birth, the circumstances of our birth and how we may have worked hard and struggled to get to our current state of success...or seeming failures. We DON'T want to go back there AGAIN...even if it's ONLY in Consciousness!

Our past maps for us the roadways we negotiated, the people we encountered, some of whom are best left there but still served as teachers in our learning.


The simple TRUTH is that without our PAST, we have NO FUTURE.


Think about this.

If ALL we have is the PRESENT MOMENT...then we cannot map out the roads "not to travel." We won't know where to go and how to get there, if all our previous steps were wiped away. We'd be like Gold Fish which supposedly have NO MEMORY, beautiful as they are!



We cannot look forward to building and visualize the pathways to traverse in the future, giving us HOPE that even if TODAY, the PRESENT, is not ALL we hope it to be, TOMORROW...YES...the future holds a PROMISE for a better day!


Iyanla Vanzant's deceased daughter,Gemmia, wrote a poem, "Yesterday I Cried," which talks about the crying she did yesterday, but now she is wiser and hopeful for the future. This was published in Iyanla's book of the same name, "Yesterday, I Cried."

The simple truth is, as Kayla Hutcheson so sadly discovered, without a PAST, we don't know WHO WE ARE!

Thank God for the GIFTS...all of them: THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE...


But as Eckhart Tolle proposes, stay in the NOW...be grateful for being here, getting here, NOW! Look at each MOMENT, each DAY, as the gift that it is: the miracle of having made it to this day and time.

Indeed that moment may be THE LAST we have left.

Then...if you believe in reincarnation...you will get to start over...ALL MEMORY wiped clean, as you begin a new life! Yes, that's reincarnation...and for ANOTHER LIFETIME! But as for RIGHT NOW...here, in this life...

...Kayla Hutcheson: We wish you a speedy recovery of your memory!

Namaste',

Che'