The awakened life is not as fleeting as the clouds we might associate with its image.  Surely, representation of one sitting in reflection, repose, connection involves images of the sun moving up from the horizon, or moving down into the horizon, clouds passing, maybe the eyes are closed and a little smile sits on the face.  

Then what?  Moment after moment, the awareness of being here, fully present, alive and tuned in, time takes a different shape around our psyche.  Nothing happens.  Everything can happen, will happen, has happened, but the moment in present mode is always just so.  It can get very slow.  Losing a timepiece or frame of reference to your day, time passes differently if at all.   It's what we learn to make of it- shaped by expectation, desire, anxiety, obligation- that drives us yearning, always unhappy with the set of choices we have made.  Somewhere, along the way, we have chosen wrong.  

Or have we?  We assume we have chosen wrong when things didn't work out as we wanted them to.  Of course, many things work out exactly as we have chosen them to, without our control over all the outcomes, or without our awareness of our impact.  The idea that we would redo things, differently, is a constant companion to our negation of experience.   Staying present, we can maybe learn to see things as they are-  with the good and the bad- instead of only yearning for their ideal- with all the good and none of the bad.  How can harmony have bad things?  

Ultimately, handing our fate over to some higher power, rendering ourselves helpless in the face of  destiny is in the back of our thoughts.  We await some force greater than ourselves- but made of our deepest wishes- to come down and steer for us, choose for us, put us on "the right path".  We admire those who go without for their selflessness, but who knows how much of that is chosen by them and how much is what they have made of their circumstances?  

We can adapt to almost any situation, if we believe we can, and sometimes thrive in places we thought we would surely die.  The resounding spirit inside of us is not the big hand from the sky- but the light inside of us that shares particles with the rest of the universe.   

You can commit to the life you live now, even knowing that things will change.  Being present doesn't mean stuck, it means just being there instead of one foot out the door into tomorrow.   It means believing that things are happening because of decisions we made and decisions others have made, and that we can't control it all.  Some of our choices work out better than others, for our preferences, and some are just chasing our own delusions.