Here, Now
If you start with a deep breath--slowly in through your nose; slowly out through your nose--you will find your way to it. To this moment. Right here. Now. We are perpetually instructed to return back to this moment, by our guides, our books, our mentors, and, eventually, with practice, by the voice in our own head. We are being asked back to this moment now by the hairs that stand on the back of your neck or the sharp swallow when things just don’t seem right. We are being directed to get back to ‘right now’ by the call of a bird passing high overhead or the rustle of dense tree leaves as the wind rushes through. We are called back to now by the sensation of cold floor on bare feet or cool hand on warm face. Every moment is a moment to return to the present. What we overthink could fill our endless numbered days so we sense our intuition asking us to reach for simplicity. We set intentions and try to be kind as we allow each ‘distraction’ to be, simply, a passing present moment that guides us to the next one, and the next one…..and more of this, on and on, until we sleep.
So what to do when you’re there, in the present moment? Depends, right? Are you in seated meditation? Keep breathing. Are you in a task? Keep going. Are you in conversation? Keep listening. Are you in a book? Keep reading. Are you in fear? Slow down, and pick up a bit of gratitude. It’s right there, yes, over there, right beside you perhaps, or maybe you'll need to reach out and extend the limits of your arm to catch hold, but it’s there. Because, whether you can see it or not, it’s tethered to you, bound to your being like the heat or air that move through you always. So if you’re here, it’s here.
Take another (slow, deep) breath through your nose; close your eyes this time. Now look again. Reach for your bit of gratitude--the one that this moment here & now is offering--and hold it in your two hands like a child with an extra-large leaf. As you examine this thing of goodness, ask yourself to notice it’s full shape and size and feel. Is it the shape and size and feel of being grateful for a warm bed or a warm meal or warm friend or a cool breeze or your favorite song? Whatever shape it’s in, begin to slow everything in your mind-body by watching your gentle breath move in and out of you with the wisdom of a hundred million years until you see this thing so clearly it’s there with you, and then hold it in your mind for long enough that it becomes the image at the back of your eyelids when you close your eyes again; in each new present moment take full, slow breaths in and out, over and over, for as long as you need, until you feel your body call you towards rising to stand and move into the next present moment, carrying this bit of gratitude with you, in your pocket, in your mind’s eye, in that nameless place inside of you where there will always be room for more goodness.
Repeat this cycle of breathing*pausing*reaching*seeing every day if you can.
***
I’m reading a thing called “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay and it is such a beautiful thing that I have to tell you a little bit about it, as it was the bit of gratitude I found within my reach today. Having something to read that is a comfort, and also eerily resonant/relevant to the time you find yourself in, is a delight. The section of this beautiful book that I read today is about joy and sorrow and annihilation. Ross reminds us of Zadie Smith and her wonderful words on joy. She says, “Joy is such a human madness.” Exploring the difference between joy and pleasure, he takes us along a winding road in his mind & heart, arriving at a place where he’s remembering for us the words of a student who said to him, and to her peers, about being a teacher, about gathering for poetry and learning: “What if we joined our wildernesses together?” Then he writes to us, the reader of this beautiful book, “Sit with that for a minute.”
Reading on annihilation and wildness and the space between joy and pleasure and sorrow is a strange gift in a time like this, when the world has been paused and the fibrous bonds between us are being stretched beyond any reach we’ve ever known, as we grasp to keep these bonds in tact, fearing loss so deeply. But then, when we sit back from our grasping to rest for a moment, we find that these bonds are so much stronger than we ever knew, overwhelmingly strong. Ross Gay ends this section of his book by wondering, “Is this sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness?/ Is sorrow the true wild?/ And if it is--and if we join them--your wild to mine--what’s that?/ For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation./ What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying./ I’m saying: What if that is joy?”
And so as I put the book down, rationing it out to myself as a daily delight all its own, I sat for a long moment and thought. And then I reached out for the nearest bit of gratitude. What I found in my two hands, as I held it up into the light of the truest childlike wonder I could find, was this question: What if there is joy in entering sorrow, with our eyes and hearts so wide we can’t miss one sacred thing, and, in doing this, we transcend the pain of sorrow and reach the true depths of it, where things are not chaotic but peaceful, and in the depths of sorrow we find what is really there, beneath all that viscous, opaque fear: what if, in the depths of sorrow we find hope, the kind that comes from looking upward and feeling in your bones that there’s something worth surviving here?
And then I turned to Clarissa Pinkola Estes retelling The Ugly Duckling in the tradition of her family, the falusias meselok, in “Women Who Run With The Wolves.” She ends the retelling like this:
And the children who came to feed the swans bits of bread bread cried out, “There’s a new one.” And as children everywhere do, they ran to tell everyone. And the old women came down to the water, unbraiding their long silver hair. And the young men cupped the deep green water in their hands and flicked it at the young girls, who blushed like petals. The men took time away from milking just to breathe the air. The women took time away from mending just to laugh with their mates. And the old men told stories about how war is too long and life too short.
And one by one, because of life and passion and time passing, they all danced away; the young men, the young women, all danced away. And the old ones, the husbands, the wives, they all danced away. The children and swans all danced away...leaving just us...and the springtime...and down by the river, another mother duck begins to brood on her nest of eggs.
And then I set that book aside, and closed my eyes, and breathed deep breaths and let gratitude pass through me--gratitude for all that makes it so I can read and think and gather and look ahead and look back, and return, over and over, to this moment now.
***
What is happening in the world right now is unclear, in terms of words of reason or fact that we think might comfort us. There’s an uncertainty clinging to every moment like a stain we wish would wash out. But it won’t. It’s here to stay, for now.
But if you listen to the whispers in the space between the panic and the forced optimism, you can hear, in different terms--in wordless felt sense and softer combinations of language that we may have long ago strayed from--that an explanation for what is happening is trying to emerge. If you are lucky enough to have the space and the time and the health to sit and pause and listen, you might find a piece of the puzzle sent from the universe just for you.
Soon enough, I believe, we will bring all these pieces together, we will join our wildernesses, and, once and for all, we will see the truer meaning of what we’re doing here, and why we’re always being called back to the present moment. We will understand, finally, and in an entirely new way, why we’re perpetually directed back to “here and now.” Finally, and for good, we will agree, together, that here and now is where life is. Before and later are of dreams and fantasies. Not all bad, but not enough. We need this. Here. Presence. To see ourselves. To see each other. To make decisions, to act, to live in ways that are actually rooted in the deep rich earth of love and compassion. We’ve been rolling stones for way too long.
Can you see it? Can you see the vast field of wildflowers literally digging themselves into the dirt for new depths and bringing the sun and the rain and seasons to them for the nourishment they need? Can you see the way unity begets life? Can you see the way outliers are coaxed towards the warmth of the group and no one is turned away? Can you see how the ones who claim not to care are suddenly in the center seeking the stability of the whole and weeping the excruciating sobs of having had their wrongs revealed to them? Can you feel it? Can you feel the sorrow becoming joy?