With all this time in quarantine, I’ve been able to catch up on some reading. I started a book that I have been skimming, but I still think I am learning a lot from what I have read. I want to do something like a review, but I can’t call it that since I haven’t read it all the way through, so maybe more of a preview and you can decide for yourself. 

` The book is called “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. My dad gave me this book as a gift; he said it helped him through hard times. He read it 10 years ago the first time and thought that this year seemed like good timing to read it again. My dad told me about the book a few times, and I asked him if I could read it sometime. Since he had put markings and highlighter in the book, he bought me a new copy! 

There are some things about this book that spoke to me. The main thing I noticed while skimming this book was that I realized how overwhelmed I was while going through the pages. I think the messages shown were so powerful and I realized it was going to take some changing that I didn’t want and I wasn’t ready for. 

The main idea that stood out to me was that you are in the now, and you can’t change that. You can only accept that you are in the moment. You have no problems, only a situation in the moment. You just can’t sit on your problems constantly. If you think of the past, it can bring you greif. If you focus on the future, it will only stress you out. This idea just freaked me out

because I believed I WAS my anxious thoughts, I really didn’t want to leave them. My anxiety of the past and future was like a personality trait to me that I didn’t want to let go of. 

The other idea that I hope to carry with me through life is that there are only three things you can do with a thought/situation that makes you unhappy: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it completely. This brought me a new perspective, which scared me. I didn’t want these to be my only options, but it is getting easier to accept overtime.  

Someday I hope to be able to finish this book, nothing is really stopping me, I just don’t know if I will comprehend it well enough if I were to read it all right now. But maybe that’s the point, I am not supposed to understand it all, maybe it takes time.