I was thinking about how the world's modern economies are all based on consumption. Some day the earth will run out of the things that we are consuming from it. Wondering what we humans will do when that happens, I began thinking about alternative ways of living. A couple of days later I came across a magazine article about a nomadic African tribe that makes its living by hunting animals and gathering fruits and vegetables. They have been pursuing this way of life for nearly 4000 years and could most likely continue to pursue this way of life and never run out of anything.

I know the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is not for me; I like having electricity, air conditioning, a nice house, car and electronic gadgets. I questioned how this tribe could continue doing the same thing over and over again for so many years. I immediately realized that they continue living the same way because it works; it keeps them alive. No civilization has ever survived for 4000 years.

The members of this tribe don't really own anything. They follow their food supply and live in temporary, crudely built shelters to protect them from weather. They respect the forest they live in and treated as sacred because their lives depend completely upon it. They consider the forest to be their father and their mother.

I could not consider converting to this way of life and I don't suggest that anyone else considers it either. I do, however, appreciate their priorities. The members of this tribe value something about life of which we have little knowledge or experience. They value something that happens only once in the entire history of the universe and this is something that most of us never consider. This once in forever occurrence happens every moment over and over for eternity.  That something is the singular moment that is happening right now. This fleeting moment is the only place where life happens and It happens only right now, and now, and now, forever.

These people know something about reality. They know there is no future and no past.  There is only now; and knowing this one moment is so precious that the Mbuti tribe has made it their central priority.  In so doing they have managed their land for more than four millennia and have not spoiled it, polluted it, or depleted it.  Their land still supports them in spite of the industrialization taking place around them every day.

Most of us in the civilized world think there is something to be accomplished in life, something for us to prove – individually and perhaps collectively as well.  They do not.  We all strive to have more – more of life's necessities and then more of life's luxuries.  We think that more will make us happy. It hasn't and it never will.

There is only one thing, one place, that has anything to do with how we feel or with what is real.  That is this moment, this once forever, love-filled, now moment.  Be in this moment, trust in this moment, and you will know the secret that has kept the Mbuti hunting the gazelle for thousands of years.