LIVING IN THE PRESENT

“Mid-life is a kind of Janus point in the living of our days...It is a time to reflect and digest, to learn and unlearn, and choose a course for the days to come.” Sarah Smith, Mid-Life: Coming Home, Ragged Edge Press (c) 1999

How often do you find yourself thinking about some event that might happen in the future which causes you to feel anxious and uncomfortable? Doesn’t that kind of fretting keep you from enjoying what’s available to you in the present? Sure, we have to make plans for our financial and health care needs and things of that nature. But once the plans are in place, it’s important to be mindful of how you torture yourself out of the present and the beauty it brings.

I find myself thinking about how I will be as a very old woman and some of what I envision worries me. I wonder how I’ll manage if I’m infirm or unable to walk or see well. In those moments, I work at bringing myself back to the present---which is all we are assured of anyway! I keep reminding myself that every moment stands alone, a presence in its own right, a singular visitation which doesn’t include the future.

Of course we’re getting older every day but we need something else to think about besides long term care insurance and worrying about what our kids are doing when we’re home sitting by ourselves. In Sue Bender’s wonderful book, Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home she says that “...the challenge is to find even ten minutes when the world stops and for that moment, there is nothing else. How can we bring that quality to what time we have---making that limited time sacred?”

Now take a moment---right now. As you read this, are you sitting in a chair, or on a train, or flying in a plane? Are you comfortable? Does the chair feel soft or hard? What do you see around the room?  Are you in lovely location? On a beach or a porch? Are you fortunate enough to have a roof overhead and your own cozy bed to sleep in? Pay close attention to the small, the beautiful, the meaningful---live in the present moment---for today, for ten minutes, for an hour. It feels good, doesn’t it? Ask youreself, what have you been overlooking in the present because you’ve been too worried about the future?