One of the most frightening aspects of the speed of modern life is the alacrity with which the days of our children’s lives can pass. If we’re not careful, we seemingly blink and their childhoods are over, and we find we’d been too preoccupied looking down at to-do lists or phone screens to have truly borne witness. I talk about these things—about slowing down, being present, being aware—not because I’m so much better at them than you are, but because I want to be better at them. I’m no zen master. I’m no yogi. I’m just an Italian-American girl from upstate New York who woke up one morning about fifteen years ago and realized there was a voice inside my head that talked to me incessantly. I can still remember the morning very clearly. I was in the shower, nothing earth shattering, and it very suddenly clicked out of nowhere that I spoke to myself, non-stop, and had been doing so my entire life.
The mind-talk goes something like this—After I get out of the shower I need to get dressed…should I wear the white blouse or the green….Don’t forget to call so and so. Then you need to pack a lunch. Then… And on and on. Nowadays I understand that this incessant mind-talk is not really a unique personality trait of mine; that it is, in fact, a plague in our modern society, and nearly everyone is tortured by it.
The thing that happens when we identify with our thoughts—when we don’t realize that the voice inside our head is just the brain’s energy constantly snapping—is that the next thing never actually arrives; if we listen to our minds, it’s always time for the next thing again. Our lives are never now. We’re playing Uno with our daughter, but we’re not really there. Instead, we’re running over in our minds what we’re going to make for dinner. The Uno game ends, we start to make dinner, and while we’re making dinner, we begin to think about what we have to do before bedtime. We’re never where we are. So we haven’t really played cards with our daughter and we haven’t really made dinner; we’ve mainly gone through the motions, and if you do that all the time, every day of your life, you’re vapid, not alive.
Your mind keeps tricking you into thinking that if you just listen to it now, you can stop listening to it after. But after never comes. The thought momentum keeps pulling you from one moment of your life to the other. People live their whole lives this way, never really being present in any one experience.
Someone I once knew called me “Dolores the Thinkasaurus,” if that gives you any idea of how thought-based I can be. If you know me in real life, you know that I’m impatient and can be discouraged when things don’t come together on my timeline. Those are largely actions driven by too much thought. I do, however, happen to have an innate sense of time’s passing, which I think perhaps I was born with; something that works in tandem with my ability to write well. I don’t completely understand it, but I think it’s an artistic attribute, where you can see things not everyone necessarily sees and feel them deeply. An awareness of the passing of time has been an acute presence in my life since childhood. When I was little I used to cry at some point during my birthday parties. It wasn’t because I didn’t get a gift I wanted, or the party wasn’t going well, it was because at some point the fact that I was no longer seven, that now I was eight and seven was gone forever, would hit me. I know that sounds strange, but I would cry, feeling in a way I couldn’t articulate that I hadn’t appreciated seven enough. I was lamenting that I hadn’t been more present.
I remember one sunny spring afternoon walking out of the house with my mother, who’d just had a birthday herself. How old are you? I asked her. Forty, she told me. And something about the fact that she had entered another decade of her life, and I hadn’t appreciated that she was in her thirties all that time, struck me. I felt I had squandered that period of her life. I’d had a mother in her thirties and didn’t even realize it, and now I didn’t anymore and never would again.
All of that is to say perhaps that morning of awakening in the shower was inevitable for me, the articulation of something that had been brewing for many, many years, but ever since that day I’ve worked hard to cultivate presence in my daily life. I’ve built a toolbox I turn to again and again to help me get there.
I’ve missed a lot of moments by failing to turn off my thoughts and tune in my presence, but it’s the birth of my children that really makes me want to be better. As you watch them change from one day to the next, the last phase sloughing off with the ease of a blink, it’s scary to feel how quickly it can all pass.
It’s really difficult to be present all of the time. Even the most illuminated teachers will tell you that if you can catch yourself not being present just once in a day, you should be grateful for that awareness. That’s how strong our mind chatter is. In addition, our world today is simply abuzz with empty-thought clutter. The internet, and social media especially, are just ticker tapes sucking our attention with pointless brain activity. There’s very little we do today without a phone in our hands. And if you’re someone like me who creates content for a living, you have to balance capturing that content with just putting down the camera and living within the moment. The air around us hisses with distraction. Look at this, everything demands of us. Now this. And over here. There’s very little silence. There really isn’t even darkness anymore. All that light from buildings and modernity is a type of noise, too. The only way to save ourselves from missing our entire lives, and most alarmingly the lives of our children, is committing, again and again, to being awake and slowing down.
Something difficult to describe happens when you’re in the moment. The situation you’re in takes on meaning, yet the meaning has no detail. What you’re doing assumes depth. Your heart swells. Your nervous system lulls peacefully. It’s not that you’re no longer thinking into the future, you’re not thinking, period. The moment and you have no mind barrier between you. You brush your child’s hair, and you are there, and it’s a simple, mundane chore, but it becomes a rich, fulfilling one. When you can string enough moments like this together, your experience transforms and you get the sense that you’re truly participating in your life. What thought can compare with that?
If you’re interested in honing or improving a practice of presence, below are some resources I’ve used that have helped me in the past and some that continue to serve me. Thought I’d share them with you….
People and Books:
Eckhart Tolle, in particular his book, The Power of Now
Pema Chödrön, in particular her books, How to Meditate and Comfortable with Uncertainty
Thich Nhat Hanh, in particular his books, Being Peace and The Sun My Heart
Tools:
Acupuncture—This has been and remains one of the best ways for me to break the energy loop of thought and stress. Acupuncture has been my go-to so often to regulate my nervous system.
Feeling your body’s energy into your extremities. You can give yourself space from your thoughts by feeling the energy of your body—that kind of low-hum that you can feel when things are quiet—and mentally funnel that energy into your hands and/or feet. Once you’ve kind of directed the energy there, almost like subtly blowing air into a balloon, just take a few moments to feel the energy humming and pulsing. This not only separates you from your thoughts for a few moments, it places you within your body.
Watch your thoughts, as opposed to letting them carry you away. You can learn to watch your thoughts as if you’re up in a theater balcony, and the thoughts are down below on the screen. Don’t attach yourself to them. Just let them pass and observe them, as if they don’t belong to you. This, too, creates space between you and your mind chatter.
Phrases and quotes I often repeat as reminders:
“What are you lacking in this moment?” —Eckhart Tolle
You’ll often find the answer is, Nothing.
“Everywhere I am, which is the right place.” —Alice Walker
A reminder that wherever you are is where you’re meant to be.
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin….” —Matthew 6:28-33
A reminder that all the pushing and pulling is unnecessary. Finding peace attracts what you need to you.
“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding….”
This reminds me that there is, indeed, a place of peace that I just need to surrender to; all the thinking in the world won’t get me there.
Let me know if you’d like to read more about this topic. I love hearing from you.
Thanks for being here with me, truly.