The Illusion of Tomorrow
“Tomorrow” can feel like a place where we must live our life —an invisible room where we rehearse conversations, pre-pay our grief, and try to outrun uncertainty. But tomorrow is not a location. It’s an idea. And ideas, however convincing, can’t hold our actual life.
Notice what happens when we come back to the present: the chair beneath us, the light in the room, the quiet work of breath. Anxiety feeds on what isn’t happening. It needs distance—between each of us and God, between our sense of self and our own body. But presence closes that distance with something simple and fierce: reality.
In Choosing Presence, we’re reminded that when our minds are “consumed with conflicts and fears of the future,” we lose the only true place God can meet us. “The future is a fiction of the mind. Only the present moment is real…” (Chapter 2, p. 18).
So today, let the future be what it is: unrealized. Let it wait. Come back to what’s finished and faithful—this breath, this moment, this ordinary holiness that keeps offering itself over and over again.
Choosing Presence is an Illuman Partner Program.
Brian Mueller – Poet, Community Organizer, and Spiritual Guide
Brian Mueller is a poet and community organizer based in Dayton, Ohio. He serves as Director of Education & Engagement for ChoosingPresence.org and is an active member of the Ohio Chapter of Illuman, where he co-leads writing retreats that support men’s spiritual journeys. As a writer, Brian is known for his candid, accessible poetry, with works including Cock‑A‑Doodle‑Doo: 100 Morning Haiku, the Poem of the Day series, and the Bull Series. Inspired by poets like Rumi and Mary Oliver, he believes everyone carries the voice of a poet within.
