Five Minute Fridays: After

Hello Lovely People,

Five Minute Friday’s are an invention by Lisa Jo-Baker. She gives you a topic and you write on it for five minutes, stream of consciousness style. No major edits, no changes, no rewrites, just whatever you can think of at that moment! Link to this week’s submission of Five Minute Friday’s here!

This week’s topic: After

Start

What is after? Does it even exist? We use it all the time in our daily lives: “what are you doing after school? Do you want to meet up after the play? Why don’t we do that after this play?”

But after, this magical land of after, doesn't really exist. It’s like tomorrow. You know it’s coming, and will eventually be here, but it’s not really a thing. There is not real tomorrow, there is only today. There is no real after, there is only now.

After distracts you from living your life in the exact moment, as it is. The entire future does. We live in a world where our lives revolve around after, tomorrow, 5 years, ten years, someday. We work towards that future that we have created in our head, the life that we strive for, everything we want after now is over.

But it’s a lie. Now can never truly be over. There is no after. There is only this moment in time.

You can imagine that after your birthday you will live a good life, after your dog dies you will try to get over him. After your life has fallen to hell you will become a better person. But if you dwell on the idea of after too much, of what could be and should be, it will distract you from who you are right now. It will stop you from living your life.

The concept of after is good, sometimes. It can help you plan and make things better for yourself. But if you let it rule your life, it will stop being real. You will be constantly waiting for an after, a tomorrow and a future. And it will never come. There is only now.

Stop