Now is an obvious word, but a tricky concept. As soon as you say "now," the now in which you said it has passed. Where did it go? It went that-a-way. Just like the now in which you said "Where did it go?" Thinking about "now" can make you dizzy.

We speak about "the present moment" and the ability to be fully present, and we claim a sort of smudgy understanding of what that means. But what is "the present moment? Seriously! "Be in the now." "Be here now!" "Be present." "In family life be completely present," says Laozi's Tao Te Ching (in Stephen Mitchell's New Age-ish translation)--a sentiment echoed in one way or another by every marriage counselor alive.

Americans have heard and used these phrases for about 40 years, as Eastern and New Age concepts influenced psychology and other ologies. We're all familiar with expressions like "right attention," "mindfulness," and family therapy's emphasis on what's happening in this room right now.

There have even been attempts to quantify the present. In Daniel Stern's The Present Moment, he states that "present moments last from 1 to 10 seconds with an average around 3 to 4 seconds," and submits this definition: "The present moment is structured as a micro-lived story with a minimal plot and a line of dramatic tension made up of vitality effects." Obviously, once you delve into it, now isn't as exact a word as it appears.

Finding the Present
The primary definition of now in the Oxford…