Living in the Now (Across Three Time Zones)

It’s early in Brazil. Late evening in Bengaluru. And mid-afternoon in Europe—right in the messy middle of a Monday that’s already too full.

That’s the quiet comedy of this conversation: three men, three continents, three different pressures on their calendars, trying to talk about a single idea that sounds simple until you live it—“living in the now.”

Frank opens with the framing: Carpe diem, seize the moment, live in the present. But the premise is immediately challenged by the two people sitting with him.

• Ismar—retired in Brazil, but calling himself a professional student, because “retired” sounds too final, too empty.
• Ritesh—30, newly married, working in Bengaluru, learning that love comes with shared time, shared habits, and a shared schedule.
• And Frank—in the middle, balancing a high-intensity project, constant meetings, caring responsibilities, and the creeping frustration of waiting on other people’s delays.

The topic isn’t theoretical. It’s personal. It’s lived.

The Myth of the Retiree With “All the Time in the World”

Frank throws the first question to Ismar: Are there moments in your day where everything feels slower—no stress, no rush?

Ismar’s answer is immediate, almost amused:

“No.”

And then he explains why retirement didn’t deliver the promised paradise. He once imagined he’d finally have time for everything he couldn’t do while working. In practice, life simply changed shape.

His day is stitched together by obligations and routines:

• sleeping at his own place, then going to his mother’s home,
• doctor appointments,
• taking her to Pilates—while doing Pilates himself,
• bringing her home, sharing a snack,
• returning to his own place, studying,
• planning a walk with a cousin (months in the making),
• and physiotherapy the next day.

He isn’t “stressed,” he clarifies—just busy. And being busy means the present moment isn’t a peaceful lake. It’s a moving walkway. You’re always stepping forward.

Evenings, he studies English and French, reads about politics, and tries not to go to bed after 11—because if he sleeps late, he wakes up without energy. He’s up between 6 and 7, not at 5 like Frank. His mother is the early riser.

Retirement, in Ismar’s world, isn’t empty space.

It’s a different kind of weight.

His personality threads through all of this: observant, sincere, slightly melancholy, and honest about his struggles—especially concentration and emotional burdens. The “present” is real, but it’s not always calm.

Ritesh: A Day That Moves Fast Even When It Looks Calm

Ritesh answers the same “slower moments” question differently.

He can name them:

• morning walk,
• lunch time around 1–2 PM,
• a tea/coffee break with colleagues.

But he also reveals the catch: even when life slows down, he feels like he’s ticking the clock. Lunch is “relaxed,” yet it’s still waiting time—waiting to go back to work, waiting for the next obligation.

And married life has reorganized everything.

Ritesh admits: yes, many burdens disappeared. Laundry, clothing prep, daily logistics—things are more organized now. Some of that mental load moved off his shoulders.

But the “free time” didn’t become empty time. It got replaced.

Now, the home has a second heartbeat.

He can’t just open his laptop and sink into debates, videos, late-night browsing—because the other person is there. And presence has a cost: you can’t treat shared time like background noise.

The new challenge isn’t chores. It’s attention.

He describes the new rhythm in a very Ritesh way—gentle, reflective, full of nuance: he’s learning to trade private comfort habits for shared rituals, and sometimes he doesn’t know what to say in the conversations they’re building together. He wants to contribute. He wants to do it right. But it takes effort.

This is classic Ritesh tone: story-driven, self-aware, balancing “good side” and “bad side,” trying to evolve rather than complain.

Frank’s Day: When “Living in the Moment” Feels Like Survival

Then Frank brings in his own day—almost like a case study in real-time pressure.

He lays it out:

• Christmas and New Year were cancelled—consumed by a major project.
• Three one-hour meetings in the morning.
• Driving his wife to appointments—physio at home, hospital, back and forth.
• A 14-kilometer round trip.
• Shifting meeting times because life refuses to fit the calendar.
• A message to someone he needs input from—and the frustration of waiting.
• Medical news that “destroyed” his week.
• A to-do list that grows instead of shrinks.
• Dinner responsibilities—Monday is pasta night.
• An “office afternoon” tomorrow that’s now gone.

His lived experience of the present is intense: the now is not peaceful mindfulness; it’s high-resolution awareness, flipping between “very good” and “totally bad.”

And what makes it harder is a particular kind of modern suffering:

the urgency you feel versus the calm other people feel.

Frank is present—but partly because he has no other choice.

Being Present vs Being Pulled Away

From there, the conversation shifts into what “presence” actually means.

Ritesh: Present, But Not Always Planned

Ritesh admits he often doesn’t follow his plan. Someone comes to his desk with a request, and he helps—forgetting his own commitments. He’s present in the interruption, and then surprised by the consequences.

He’s living in the moment, yes—but not always in a way that feels healthy. He wants “slow time”—time reserved just to feel relaxed. And right now, that’s rare.

Ismar: Present, But Distracted by Thought

Ismar goes philosophical: past and future don’t exist; if you don’t live now, you aren’t living.

And then he undercuts his own ideal with honesty:

He has concentration problems. He often does one thing while thinking about another. Even in class, an idea appears, and he starts writing it down—not notes from the class, but thoughts from his own mind.

For him, distraction isn’t physical. It’s internal.

He’s not pulled away by noise.

He’s pulled away by thinking.

That’s the Ismar signature: intellectual curiosity, detached observation, and the quiet fatigue of a mind that rarely stops turning.

Phones, Attention, and the Warp-Speed Scroll

The modern villain makes an appearance: the smartphone.

Ritesh describes it bluntly: the phone is the main distractor—notifications, browser tabs, constant switching. Even reading a serious book becomes difficult. He drifts off, realizes he’s no longer reading, and has to go back pages.

Frank shares a similar instinct—he deleted apps like LinkedIn from his phone to force friction. If he wants the platform, it has to be on the laptop. That extra barrier helps.

Then Frank adds a striking observation from Korea: people flicking through content at “warp speed,” giving each thing barely a second before moving on. A whole economy is built around capturing attention instantly.

Ritesh recognizes the same phenomenon in India and globally: short-form videos, summaries of books, reduced attention spans. He tries to resist it—no Instagram app, only browser access—but he admits it’s still happening.

The conversation isn’t moralizing.

It’s more unsettling than that.

It’s three people noticing the same shift and realizing it’s inside them too.

What Keeps You On Track When Life Is Too Full?

Frank shares a coping strategy: when his brain is overloaded by the project, he has to do something physical—cooking—just to stop his mind from chewing on the same problems.

Ritesh’s version is simpler: he gets up from his desk, walks, drinks coffee, stands on a balcony area. But even that becomes a trap: he intends to drink water after arriving at the office, and then an hour and a half disappears like it was fifteen minutes.

Ismar’s answer matches Ritesh’s: walking, or sitting in a café, or simply stepping outside the pressure.

All three, in different cultures, arrive at the same truth:

sometimes the best way to live in the present is to leave your thoughts behind by moving your body.

When Conversation Feels Easy—and When It Turns Ugly

Frank asks about what makes conversation “easy.”

Ismar answers with a clear moral framework:

• conversation is easy when people share space,
• when everyone can speak,
• when different opinions are accepted.

He gives an example: in a clinic waiting area after an ultrasound, a retired police officer reacts aggressively when Ismar says he likes politics—telling him he’s wrong, he should change his life, insulting politicians. Another person, by contrast, respects his view.

For Ismar, that difference is everything: the first becomes an “annoying” conversation; the second becomes human.

Ritesh echoes the same theme, in his own way:

• office talk about cars and sports feels empty—he has nothing to add,
• shallow conversation drains him,
• meaningful conversation requires acceptance and emotional connection.

He says something important: friends often feel easy because they “think alike,” so the conversation stays in sync. But that also hints at the danger—easy conversation can become an echo chamber.

And then both men admit something quietly profound:

they don’t really have conversations like this one anywhere else.

Ritesh had versions of it in the past—loud, half-drunk, chaotic discussions with friends. But not structured, not civilized, not weekly, not intentional.

Ismar says his best conversation is here—because he doesn’t have a habitual group. Most people around him talk about family, dogs, children—subjects he can only listen to, not share.

So this weekly meeting becomes something more than practice.

It becomes a kind of shared space.

A secular monastery, but made of voices.

What Feels Simple and Clear in Early 2026

Frank closes with a reflective question: in the beginning of 2026—what feels simple and clear right now?

Ritesh answers with a paradox:

Life is simple—until you think too much.

He talks about his wife’s job search: previously, the complexity was “will she get a job?” Now a different complexity arrives: shift schedules, future family planning, how they’ll manage. Still, he finds clarity in one thing: he will keep working; the current path is the path.

Ismar pushes back against the idea that his life must be simpler. He offers the classic warning:

the neighbor’s garden looks greener.

And then he says something that lands oddly—because it’s meant as reassurance, but it reveals a worldview:

Brazil has no violence, no starving people—everything is good.

It’s less a factual claim than a personal lens: compared to what he imagines elsewhere, his life feels stable. It’s also Ismar’s style—matter-of-fact, slightly detached, sometimes blunt in a way that shows how differently he reads the world.

The Time Question: Did It Fly?

In the last minutes, Frank asks the simplest test of presence: Did the time go quickly?

Ritesh says yes—the conversation gives him a different kind of pleasure, not like drinking or going out, but something intellectual. It’s “me time,” a block he protects.

Ismar says the same, but in his own words: it’s an opportunity to talk differently, listen differently, think differently afterward. He calls it “therapy.”

Then Frank has to leave—another message from his wife. Another dash into town.

And that’s how the conversation ends: not with a conclusion, but with reality returning—time zones, obligations, bodies, phones, and the next thing to do.

Which, in its own way, is the most honest definition of “living in the now”:

not escaping the moment—just meeting it, again and again, even when it’s too full.