This is the time,
when else would there be?
This is the only place you can be,
striving for it to be somewhere else can distract easier than it can assist.
As a bird who can only use the current around him to navigate,
we can only mold the current moment to our desire.

Even, imagine, a convict staring at the bunk above him, white walls surrounding him.
Daydreaming of elsewhere eases the sharp pain of reality,
but only amplifies the numbness he has come to accept.
Since he is imagining somewhere else, it only makes the whitewash and dry colors around him fade farther.
No place could be more different, the clock reaches slowly to turn the corner.
While his mind drifts to his other place, his cell mate stays where he is.
They sit in the same lonely cell, but they are seeing different things.
Not again, his mate thinks, he will never return, accepting the situation he has placed himself in,
While the original continues to think of what he will do when he gets out, avoiding any thought of the present.
He see's not what is around him but what he wants to see, delaying reality until he is set free.
But what is learned by ignoring what is around you? How can this man expect to make a change,
when he does not accept he is wrong now?

As hard as it may be,
as aggravating, frustrating and powerful as the past may pull us into a different view,
we are the navigators of our perceptions, only we can make that final choice to see the beauty,
or wade in the filth.
To grab on a opportunity, or keep walking with our eyes focused in a different direction.
It may be one of the hardest mental challenges we face, but to see the world as it is now,
unaffected by our past events, is to set ourselves free.
To not dwell on what we desire, but appreciate what we have, and see how we can formulate our own plan.
And sail with the wind that we have.