How About Now?

My late husband, Marvin Beck, taught me how to question my beliefs and the thoughts that kept me stuck in my own personal narrative of unhappiness. My happiness wasn’t based on a set of circumstances, but rather on the beliefs and attitudes I held about those circumstances. It was right when we first met. I was describing to him how unhappy I was in my relationship at the time. 

“What is it about your relationship that you’re unhappy about?” he asked.

So, I gave him more details about my partner at the time—what I thought he’d done to me, or I’d done to him, or we’d done to each other—as if to prove: See? I have every reason to be unhappy. I had clung to that pain for a long time—I knew the story by heart—as if it helped me somehow.

But, Marvin just looked at me with a gentle smile and said, “That’s what happened then. Why are you unhappy about it now? How about now?”

With that simple question, he helped me open a door that I eagerly walked through. Right then, I learned I didn’t need the pain, anger, and unhappiness as a motivation to change. They weren’t doing me any good. I could, in fact, put that narrative down and live a new life without it.

Marvin was one of the first students of Bruce Di Marsico’s Option Method, the program that teaches people how to uncover beliefs and attitudes that underlie all of our unhappiness. For me, learning that my own unhappiness did not have to be an automatic response to events in my life was extraordinary, liberating. Past beliefs were just that: past. 

When Marvin asked me, “How about now?” answering the question helped pull me into the present—the place where I could be free. It was an opportunity to answer the question as the person I was right then and there, in the moment, unencumbered by past or future. It was a question imbued with deep acceptance, understanding, and unconditional love. 

All of our past choices are based on what we knew at the time, always taking care of ourselves in the best way, all things considered. In the present moment, if they no longer serve us, we can let them go.

So, I ask you: How about now? What do you choose? You might feel it in your body, an internal leap, or a sense of ease. That's the answer. It's so elegantly simple. What could be more loving? More accepting? Now is all that matters.