The Present

Birthdays (personal new years!), are reminders to each of us of that inescapable truth: That ever-moving march of time.

33 years now. And counting fast. I want to plan my years. This year I’ll save up a lot. Next year, I’ll travel for a year. The year after, get married. And so on. At this point, I feel like there’s no room left for mistakes. A setback might mean that I’d miss the train completely, that I won’t make it to the destination I want to get to. There’s no time for delays.

So in wanting to be efficient with my time, making sure every hour has a purpose, every year taking me closer to where I want to get to, I plan things. I over-plan. And in so doing I mess it up completely. Caught up in thinking about the ideal scenario, I end up missing the scenario that is here. What is actually happening, the moments unfolding. I become absent; not present. And I simply miss it.

The great river of Life has other plans. Or if you prefer, has no plans at all. It’s simply moving, flowing. A sudden turn here, a calm section there, then a drop and a roar of a spectacular waterfall. And the more I hold on to how I think it ought to be, how my day, my years, should flow, the more tension is created, and the more I struggle.

I know what I have to do. But lessons are easy to understand and hard to practice. Still, if I want to get better at this, there is no other way.

So I return to my basics. This is what I know I should, and want, to learn and practice: To let go of plans and cherished outcomes, to pull myself away from my head and into my body, grounded in what’s here, in what’s actually happening. To get a feel of how the day, and my years want to unfold, and trusting to follow that.

To trust that whatever the outcome may be, even if it’s not your ideal or planned outcome, as long as you enjoy the journey, be present in the process, with the people around you and with the work that you’re doing, it will all work out in the end.

And if it doesn’t? Well, there’s nothing we can do about that. But at the very least, we should enjoy the ride.

To hone my attention to this sliver of a moment, the present. That’s what I want to get good at.

“Experiencing the present purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.”

May I learn to empty my cup, so it may be filled with the grace of the present.

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