What Gloria Steinem and I Have in Common

     When I met Gloria Steinem years ago, she was the well-known leader of the radical feminist movement and I was far from radical - just an unknown reporter assigned to cover a speech of hers. I agreed with her that women ought to receive equal opportunity and pay (I could barely make my rent and buy food). But beyond that, our beliefs diverged. She didn’t want to marry; I did. She sought to elevate women through careers; I gave up my career to raise three daughters.     
     Now I discover that with all our differences, our beliefs have converged in one way. Steinem says that through the decades, she had two tracks running in her head. One was “thinking forward to some future scene, imagining what should be.…” The second track was recalling “what I actually did or should have done in the immediate past.” Those two tracks squeezed out the present, Steinem writes in “Audacious Aging.”     
     But now she’s learning to be “alive-in-the-moment.” So am I. When asked, “What are you looking forward to?" (which implies that my current situation isn’t enough), I let my thoughts sift through the here-and-now. After all, today is “the only time in which we can be fully alive,” Steinem says.     
     I agree. As I relish the present, I discover I’m more grateful for the past and less concerned about the future.     
     And that is a radical practice to embrace.