The mind rarely stays where the body is.
It slips into memories or jumps into imagined futures, creating emotions that feel real even when nothing is happening in the moment.
And depending on where the mind settles, peace either appears or disappears.

When the mind lives in the past, sadness grows.
When it runs into the future, anxiety takes over.
When it stays in the present, even briefly, peace returns.

I understood this slowly, through moments that were not dramatic but very real.

One of those moments came back to me unexpectedly one afternoon.
In school, a teacher once looked at my notebook, frowned, and said in front of the entire class,
“You are never going to achieve anything with this kind of work.”
It was harsh.
It felt unnecessary.
But what surprised me more was how long that sentence stayed inside me.

Years later, whenever I made a mistake or whenever something did not go my way, that voice appeared again.
Not her exact voice, but the memory of the humiliation attached to it.
The past had no power of its own.
The power came from my mind returning to it again and again.
Each time, the same sadness resurfaced as if it had just happened.

Then there were the nights in my university hostel.
The future bothered me in a different way.
I used to lie awake worrying about whether I would ever find my direction, whether life would fall apart, whether I would end up disappointing everyone including myself.
My room was quiet.
My surroundings were peaceful.
Yet inside, it felt like my chest was tightening for no reason.
My mind was living in a future that did not exist, but my body reacted as if it was already happening.

Anxiety grew not because of the present, but because of a hundred imagined outcomes.
Nothing in the real world at that moment was threatening, yet my brain created its own storms.

With time, I started noticing something simple.
Whenever I returned to the present, even for a few seconds, everything became lighter.
Drinking a glass of water without rushing.
Standing on the balcony in the morning when the air was cooler.
Walking without headphones.
Looking at people going about their day, unaware of my thoughts.
These tiny moments calmed me in ways I cannot fully explain.
Not because life was fixed, but because my mind stopped wandering.

The present moment rarely hurts.
It becomes heavy only when the mind brings old pain or future fear into it.

The past has lessons, but it is heavy to live in.
The future has possibilities, but it is unstable to live in.
Only the present has clarity.

This does not mean ignoring what happened or avoiding what is ahead.
It means not letting the mind stay stuck in places that do not exist anymore.

The mind will wander.
It will remember things you wish it would forget.
It will imagine things you wish it would not fear.
But each time you bring it back to what is happening right now, something inside settles.
You feel your breath.
Your shoulders loosen.
Your heartbeat slows.
You realize nothing is wrong in this exact second.

And that is often all peace needs.