There's a bend in the road ahead. You can't see past it.

You could spend the next hour imagining what's there. A well, a castle, disaster, revelation, nothing at all. Or you could walk the road you're actually on.

Alberto Caeiro, one of the fictional poets created by Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese writer who wrote under multiple invented identities, chose the second option:

Beyond the bend in the road
there may be a well
there may be a castle
or there may be nothing but more road

I don’t know
and I don’t ask

As I walk toward the bend
I look only at the path before me

because the path before me
is all I can see

None of what lies beyond the bend matters now. What matters is the ground beneath your feet. The bend will reveal itself only when you reach it, and no amount of staring into the unseen will bring it closer or make it clearer.

Yogi Ramacharaka makes the same point with unmistakable directness. He teaches to "live in the Eternal Now…” and to “let the Past and Future take care of themselves. The Now is the only real time." The past is gone, the future is unborn, and the only territory where power, clarity, or peace exist is the present moment. Your visible piece of the road.

Humanity has an obsession with speculation, planning, forecasting, and anxiety about outcomes. You cannot walk the road beyond the bend because you are not there yet. You cannot drink from the well or enter the castle because they are still imaginary. The only place you can live, decide, breathe, and act is where your feet are. The Eternal Now.

Attend to the life that is actually present. What you have is this moment. What you control is the step you take. Beyond the bend is none of your business yet.