How does one exist in the moment while simultaneously thinking/planning/dreaming of the future?  Mindfulness is all very good.  Getting oneself back to the living breathing infinity of now to counteract the centrifugal pressures of information overload. 

Sometimes I think it would be better not to keep up with current affairs.  After all, it's always and again, 'wars and rumours of war'.  Humanity hasn't changed, we just wage our wars on a bigger scale and with better news coverage (with instantaneous real time video).  With the continuous onslaught of how horrible we are to each other, to the earth and to all living things, I need to bring myself back to here and now.

There's no better way to do that, for me anyway, than to be in nature.  I'm a lousy meditator and have pretty much given up trying to meditate.  Later on I'm sure, I'll drag out my pillow and set the clock and focus on my breath but after round after round after round of practice with little change I have had enough.

(as an aside:  One is instructed to just be aware of the coming and going of thoughts, like puffs of air on the surface of water, while not getting involved with them.  Even that is beyond me.  When I'm thinking a thought, I'm the thought.   I can't stand outside the thought to observe the thought wafting about on the surface on my mind   It may occur to me later that I'm thinking and I'll let that particular thought go, so I can sense the dichotomy of the thought and me as the thought.  Nevertheless, that little bit of meditation wisdom is beyond my ability).

But in Nature.  That is another thing entirely.  I become like a sponge.  I can almost feel the buzz of life; trees growing, grasses growing, insects munching, walking, flying, eating and being eaten, the continuous hum of life.  The very air seems alive.  My ears seem to expand until they are the size of dinner plates.  I look up and there is the sky.  The Sky!  A continuous look through infinity if we'll just raise our gaze.  And the clouds, like white schooners, solid yet amorphous, drifting over me, me looking up and making them real by seeing them.  How little we take in.  It is much easier for me to BE when in nature.  It is easy not to be defined by thought for all my thought is defined by the boundless Self in Nature. 

Sometimes when I've been inside for a long time and I step out under the sky, I can feel my spirit expand to match the limitlessness of it.  Until that moment I didn't realize I was constrained, constricted and made little by four walls and a ceiling.  It is those moments when planning or dreaming of a future is just a game to amuse the human element.  The spirit is always infinite.