I have an unhealthy habit of checking my phone too often. It’s ridiculous, actually. Sometimes I find myself looking at it five seconds after I just checked it, because maybe in the time it took me to put it back in my pocket, someone texted me or messaged me or tagged me.

And then before I know it, I’m on Instagram, looking at photos of people I don’t even know. I’m looking at what they had for breakfast or at pictures of their new puppy. And if I’m not on Instagram, I hop over to Twitter and start reading pithy, mysterious statements written by people I’ll never meet.

I can be on a date with my wife, the woman of my dreams, and we’re eating a gourmet meal at a fantastic restaurant (that we found, coincidentally, with a smartphone app), but I’m distracted by Joe Somebody and the fact that he is eating a two-egg scramble with mozzarella. What is wrong with me? Why am I so addicted to living vicariously through others at the expense of enjoying the people I’m currently with and the place I currently am and what I’m currently doing?

I know I’m not alone here. You see this phenomenon everywhere: two, three, four people are sitting together, but they have their noses in their cellular devices. They are surrounded by real, living, talking people, but they’re engrossed with digital personalities and experiences.

And it’s not like the image we portray online is even that genuine or complete. We act as art directors of our lives via social media. The other day I was at a great hotel near the ocean, but the hotel in front of us mostly blocked the view. I found myself sticking my phone as far out of our window as possible and contorting myself into positions a gymnast would have been proud of just to take a picture that I could text to a friend. “Look where we are!”

“Wow! Amazing view!”

But it wasn’t even real. Only my cell phone could enjoy that view. How much of what I’m staring at on my feeds is just a staged, cropped, and filtered version of someone else’s life?

It’s human nature to want to be where we’re not. Smartphones and social media didn’t create this tendency. “The grass is always greener on the other side” could be the mantra of the human race. While we lounge in our luscious, green, thick grass, we wonder, Does the person next to me have slightly more luscious grass? What if their grass is blue? Is blue the new green? Wow! If only I had blue grass or pink grass. All I have is this boring green grass. Stinks to be me.

Marketing preys on this, of course. It shows us images of sun-soaked tropical locations, and it says for only a small fortune, you, too, can spend two weeks in this glorious location.

So we endure six months of drizzle and cold and hard work in order to earn this sensational image we’ve been sold. Then we get there, and the first thing we look for is a Wi-Fi signal so we can see what’s happening back home. Here we are in Maui, but we’re wondering what’s happening in Minnesota. Minnesota? Really? I have nothing against Minnesota, but if I’m in Maui, I should be enjoying Maui. Minnesota will do just fine without me.

We often view time with the same grass-is-always-greener mentality. For example, the older we get, the more we tend to relive the “good ol’ days.”

Remember the good ol’ days? Those were the days, weren’t they? No cell phones. No Twitter or Facebook or e-mail. Those were simple times, back when phones were tied to the wall and you just focused on the person you were with.

Those weren’t simpler times, FYI. Those were stressful times, because nobody could get ahold of anybody. Let’s face it: human nature hasn’t changed. It just manifests differently.

The funny thing about memories is that they have a way of looking bigger than life. It’s kind of like when you put an Instagram filter on a mediocre picture—suddenly it looks vintage and nostalgic and awesome. We subconsciously edit out the things we didn’t like and just remember the rosy parts.

Or, instead of the good ol’ days, we become all about someday. So you’re single and you’re thinking all the time, Right now I’m single and I’m lonely and I’m stressed-out, but someday I’m going to get married and it’s going to be great. God, help someday come soon.

Then it comes, and you get married, and it’s fun, and the intimacy is great. But now you’ve got an actual job, and you have responsibilities, and you have a schedule. You have another human being that you have to coordinate with and communicate with, and you have to be home at a particular time. And sometimes you see your old friends who are still single, and you think, Oh, the good ol’ days, back when I was free as a bird. I went to the movies by myself, but I was free.

It’s human nature. We are good at missing the good ol’ days, and we are good at longing for someday. But in the process, we often undervalue the importance of today.

A lot of our fulfillment and satisfaction in life comes from the simple, underrated ability to live in the moment, to enjoy the moment, to experience the moment. We live life best when we live it without regretting the past or fearing the future.

Please don’t misunderstand—we should learn from the past, and we should prepare for the future. I wrote a whole chapter on starting with the end in mind (chapter 3). I’m a huge proponent of living life carefully and wisely.

But living wisely doesn’t mean ignoring the present. Life does not consist of what should have happened, what might have happened, or what hopefully will happen. Life is what is happening—right now. The past affects and informs the present, and the future helps us decide how to live in the present, but the only moment we can actually live in is this moment.

That sounds great in theory. But in a world that is uncertain and unstable, a world that hands us more than our share of evil and tragedy, how do we remain stable in the present?   

Life is ____.  How would you finish that sentence?

Judah Smith believes Jesus shows us how to live life to the fullest. In this follow-up to his New York Times and USA Today bestseller Jesus Is ____, Judah completes the new sentence again and again, revealing how