It seems there are two prevalent messages out there these days. And while individually they make sense, when we look at both together, they seem to contradict each other. But do they really?

Let’s start with the one that’s received more attention in the long term: Plan for tomorrow. As a species, we tend to be forward thinking. When we find ourselves in a new or different situation, our brains begin evaluating the options and playing out different scenarios. We do this automatically without conscious thought much of the time.

When we consciously plan, we review options and set course down the path that makes the most sense to us at that time. It’s planning ahead that has resulted in the long-term survival and prosperity of our species. Planning is was brought about agriculture. Farmers plant seeds in the spring and plan to harvest the resulting crops in the fall.

Builders create plans for buildings, then put together schedules of when each part will be done.

More recently, people have been encouraged to plan for retirement. Save money now for a bright and prosperous future. However, planning for retirement has come under fire recently by the second message: Live in the moment.

There are many out there who push the concept of “min-retirements” where you take a year off and do whatever you want. After all, who knows if you’ll be alive in 40 years to reap the rewards of saving now. When you live in the moment, you enjoy life now, as it happens.

You stop and smell the roses.

There’s a certain expectation of spontaneity that comes with this idea. By living in the moment, you learn to take whatever life throws at you – and hopefully be grateful for it. But is this really what it means to live in the moment? Does it mean that if you have the urge to quit your job and run off to Tonga that you should do it?

NO!

That’s living for the moment – completely different from living in the moment. When you live for the moment, you do what feels best for you right now, without regard for the future consequences.

When you live in the moment, you’re aware of where you are right now. You pay attention to what you’re doing, what’s going on around you, and how the interactions of everything affect everything. It’s the awareness that’s key. Too often we rush through life trying to get to the next thing without paying attention to the here and now.

Even when we’re doing something we want to do, we may not be aware of what we’re doing because we’re focused on getting to the next thing.

This past weekend I was out on a day hike on the Colorado Trail. Since it’s summer, there are a lot of people attempting to through-hike it. On this particular morning, I was behind two of these hikers. They were busy chatting away and clearly set only on getting one foot in front of the other as fast as possible. Maybe that was their intent given that they still had 470 miles of trail ahead of them. I don’t know since I’m not them.

We had just come over a ridge and could see at least half a mile of trail ahead. On the next ridge was a buck eating leaves off one of the scrub oak in the area. I watched him for several minutes until we were nearly on top of him. At that point I called to the hikers in front of me asking if they saw the deer. They hadn’t. In fact, they didn’t even know I was behind them. They stopped and looked at it then thanked me for pointing it out.

The point of this is that it’s possible to get so wrapped up in what we’re doing for the future that we don’t notice what’s happening right now. We don’t stop and smell the roses or see the deer.

If “live in the moment” is the same as “know where you are right now”, then it seems that “plan for tomorrow” is the same as “know where you’re going.”

When you plan, you look ahead and around to know what direction to go and get an idea of the obstacles in your way to get to your destination. But to do that, you have to know where you are. If you don’t know where you are, you can’t know which way to go.

As an analogy, if you want to get to downtown Chicago, it makes a difference if you’re starting from Aurora, IL; Denver, CO; or Paris, France (or Paris, TX for that matter). Know where you are to know how to get to where you want to go.

Yet, during the journey from where you are to where you want to be, you’re always where you are. At the same time, you’re also moving to where you’ll be in the future.

Imagine you’re in a small boat adrift at sea. Off in the distance you see land. Living in the moment is taking stock of the situation. You see the land. You have a boat. You have oars. From there you plan. You’ll point the boat toward land and move it by using the oars. Getting back in the moment, you start rowing. Now you’re both in the moment and planning for the future. Once you reach land, you’ll do this again.

My conclusion is that living in the moment and planning for tomorrow go hand-in-hand. It’s all about awareness of where you are, where you want to go, and how you want to get there.