The Power of Now

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I just recently posted about one of my recent experiences doing Bikram and alluded to Eckhart Tolle's conception of consciousness and the importance of living in the present, or as he calls it, "The Power of Now". Recently, at the movies, they've been playing this Coke commercial, which I actually find to be the most tragic thing I've ever seen:


All I see when I watch this is a guy who is such a Coke junkie that he completely misses out on what's happening around him. He doesn't ever join the snowball fight. He never actually smiles until he gets his fix. There is such joy and fun and laughter happening all around him, and he misses it all completely. All he can think about is getting his bottle of Coke. When I saw it for the first time a couple weeks ago, it just made me so sad. To think that someone can have so much happiness and child-like glee around him and for him to be completely unaware of any of it. Dodging snowballs aside, he appears completely unaware of the fun happening around him. In fact, the fun is actually getting in the way of his fix. Am I the only one who sees this?

To make matters worse, Coke's tagline at the end of the commercial is "Open Happiness". What?! Wasn't there happiness going on all around this guy? Wasn't happiness exactly what he was missing out on to get his Coke? If you played the exact same ad with a guy needing to get a drug hit, with the tagline being "open happiness", everyone would be outraged. However, if it's a billion dollar making pop company, nobody bats an eye. Everyone thinks it's cute, it's normal, it's fun. This scares me, and outrages me, but like I said, above all, it makes me sad more than anything.

On the upside though, it reminded me of how much I love snowball fights.

Lesson of the day: Live in the present. The actual Now.

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