The Odd, Wonderful, Sensation of Being Present

 

A new level of reality has been coming over me in gentle waves, lately. One I have to admit I have never noticed before. You know how there is all this talk about “Mindfulness”, being “In the Moment”, “Living in the Present”? Well, I don’t know about you, but this has always been baffling to me. I mean, where the hell else can one be? I realize that my head is always going a million miles a minute, that I am often sort of transported, mentally, into things I want to do later, items I need to pick up from the grocery store, phone calls I need to return. The truth is, it has been so common for me to live my life in this state of distraction, I wasn’t even aware that I wasn’t really EVER present for what was before me.

Suddenly, without any conscious effort on my part, there have been these times, more and more often, when I am right where I am. That I am actually seeing the world in front of me, around me, without any distraction or intrusion from the past or the future. When I am out on my walks in the morning, and the air is so bracing when I first step outside, and the way I warm up within a block or so. The rhythmic sound of my feet as I walk is like a mantra that focuses me. Sometimes, I round a corner, look up, and like this morning, I see this incredible sun rising up over the bay, and the water looks like liquid gold, like a melted trail of the sun itself. This morning, as I ran down the hill with Lucy pulling me in her overzealous wake, I felt so alive. I realized I had this big ridiculous grin on my face, and that anyone who saw me would think I was nuts, but I really didn’t care.

I stop a lot to take pictures. I walk when I feel like it, and I run when the mood strikes me. But it isn’t just happening when I am alone. The other day, my older daughter came outside to talk to me, and as I looked up at her, I was struck by her appearance. It was like I was seeing this nearly grown, beautiful young woman for the very first time. Her loveliness took my breath away. It was as if I had been walking around with some weird buffer around me, keeping me disconnected from my own eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?” She asked. “Like what?” I bluffed, pretending like there was nothing different about anything. But everything is different. At least in flashes.

Camryn, too. As I gave her a bath the other night, like I do every night, I actually tuned in and participated (earnestly, not in the placating way that I usually do) in her joyful, non-stop banter. I realized what a wonderful, bright, sunny little human being I had been blessed with, out of the blue. I was so grateful for her guileless, un-jaded happiness…so glad that it had not been disturbed yet by whatever nonsense the world eventually heaps upon us. I am so glad I got to witness it for at least one unhurried moment.

It’s happening all the time, and it seems like the more I notice it, the more it happens. Maybe it is because I am alone, and I am free of all of the push and pull that goes on in a romantic relationship. That tends to take up a lot of head space, at least for me. Maybe it is because I have finally given myself full permission to live my life the way that I, and no one else, sees fit. That the rules I am following today are MINE. The truth is, this has brought me more peace than I have ever before known. Maybe it is the absence of fear in my life. I don’t know.

What I do know is that being present, really, fully, totally present…it truly is a gift. If I figure out how I am getting there, I will be sure to share the directions.