Being Present

Being Present. Sages believe that there is wisdom in this. Yet, how many of us really live this way? Why don’t we? Too much baggage from the past? Too much worry over the future? Both of which are no longer in our control. We’ve heard that the present is the gift. That we only have power in the present.

Yet, for me, it feels like somehow I avoid the present in one way or another. Thoughts slip in sideways and take me down a path I don’t care to go. And then, the moment is lost to me. I don’t think we can ever effectively escape these sideways distractions. They seem to be integral to our lives. We’re often planning for the next thing. However, once-in-awhile, I have that experience of being precisely where I am, doing (or not doing) exactly what I’m doing. Sometimes, I’m fully present with someone else. I’m seeing them, hearing them, responding to them, experiencing the moment with them. Yet, it’s so rare. How come I can’t harness the fleeting moment and be comfortable within it?

Here’s a poem where I pondered just that…

And Then What?
by Christine O’Brien

on stopping and being present

in this one particular moment

leaving everything pending, undone

unattended

I read that if I died

all the activities

I deemed important

would die with me

for who would be interested

in taking up the threads of my existence

and continuing the odd weave?

sometimes I don’t want

this warp and woof I’ve created.

start anew…

I wonder if there is another me

on another side

of this thinning veil

cheering me on

rah rah

if I could claw a way through to her

merge with her

know the secrets

I already know

live the life

that dreamers awaken to

be real

on this plane

could I drop all the tasks

so self-important

really live while I’m alive?

oh sweet adventure

oh daring & renewed fascination

now, the wind does howl

and the wood crackles in the stove

spring has slipped backwards

into winter

it’s been a long day

the bath is ready

I’m tired

and anything profound

is more than I desire

this stopping and being present

is so lush.

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Do you feel you are fully present, partially present or rarely present to what’s in front of you? Today? Right now?

Being the Age that You Are

…and in the times that you live. Right now, this feels very challenging. With a pandemic, wildfires around the earth, worldwide protests arising from ongoing social injustices, political instability, economic crashes, and more! Who wouldn’t want to escape into the past or a perceived as better future?

How often do I retreat into the past or project into the future in my thoughts? Often, I’m sure. I remember thinking that “things would be better when I conquered some aspect of my personality…in the future” or how much more pleasant it is to linger over a rare soft spot in the past. I do think that sometimes, it is good to recall a moment when I felt powerful in the past, or exceptionally healthy or positive and to draw on that feeling to bring it forward into a challenging time today. However, idling there isn’t helpful. And while it’s fine to imagine a better future, now is where the action happens to begin to shift energy.

On my last birthday…I rediscovered magic. I woke on my birthday feeling unsettled and grumpy. I felt like cancelling the gathering with three friends. I had a flexible plan for them to come over around 5:00 p.m., depending on the heat. We would sit outside, bring our own food and drink, sit socially distant and share carrot cake. Contemplating cancelling, I thought about the last birthday, a big one, when I was sick. I thought about how I deserved a party, a celebration of me. I remembered when I was a girl and had given myself a few birthday parties…because no one else would. Suddenly, I had the energy to create a special setting for myself and my friends in the backyard. And the day unfolded from there into a lovely shared experience.

****

“Let me stand in my age with all its waters flowing round me.
If they sometimes subdue, they must finally upbear me, for I
seek the universal and that must be the best.”
Margaret Fuller

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I didn’t know who Margaret Fuller was. Do you? It’s amazing to me how many women of some notoriety in their times have slipped through the cracks of “his…story.”

Margaret Fuller was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women’s rights activist (1810 to 1850). In a brief forty years, she accomplished quite a bit! She left behind a lot of her writings including a book entitled Woman in the Nineteenth Century. I encourage you to google her and read a brief bio of her life. She was a deep thinker of her times. Anyone who has gone before (our ancestors) sets the stage for the next ones to enter.

A Delicate Balance

Recently, I watched a film produced by Patagonia–
The Refuge: Fighting For A Way Of Life.
The film illustrated the plight of the Gwich’in Nation of Alaska, specifically the area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

“The Gwich’in population is located in northeastern Alaska, the northern Yukon and Northwest
Territories of Canada. Known as ‘The Caribou People,’ the culture and life of the Gwich’in has
been based around the Porcupine Caribou herd for thousands of years. The Gwich’in peoples
have relied upon the caribou for food, shelter, clothing, tools and medicine. So intertwined with
the Porcupine Caribou herd, the Gwich’in have named the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge
“Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit” which translates to ‘The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.’
The Coastal Plain is the destination of the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates to the Coastal
Plain each year to birth and raise their young. Not only does the life of the caribou begin on the
Coastal Plain, but it is also where the life of the Gwich’in nation is supported. The lives and
heritage of the Gwich’in are directly tied to the caribou herds – much like the Plains Indians
relied on the buffalo. Without a healthy caribou population, the Gwich’in culture would
struggle to survive.” from http://www.alaskawild.org/educate

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This painting is my tribute to the Gwich’in Nation in recognition of their intricate and interdependent relationship with the Porcupine Caribou. In legislating, thereby allowing corporate oil moguls to exploit this sacred region, we are influencing climate change to our detriment. In saving this region from such exploitation, we are not only protecting the rights of the Gwich’in Nation, the Caribou and migrating birds, we are protecting the future of a healthy earth for generations to come.

Now…and Then

“10,000 flowers in spring
the moon in autumn
a cool breeze in summer
snow in winter–
If your mind is not clouded
by unncecssary things
this is the best season of your life.”
by Wu-Men (Chinese poet)

Isn’t that a secret we’d like to have an answer to–how to stay present within this moment and not drift off into the past, future, fear, worry, conjecture, etc? At least more of the time. Being present to one’s daily life experience is desirable.

However, when we write (or paint or create art), we move in all directions, don’t we? There is very little that is linear about the creative process, especially in the initial stages. That said, I begin with an intention. Even if I seem to veer off course. For me, setting a creative intention rouses personal process. The goal then is to stay present with my process as I write or paint–wherever it might take me (even when it changes course from my original creative intention).

Year ago, I began reading a translation of the French author, Marcel Proust’s classic, Remembrance of Things Past, otherwise known as In Search of Lost Time. At that time, I found that reading the first volume (one of seven) was both laborious and tedious. My mind stumbled over the slow revelation and wanted to skip ahead to get to the story behind the array of descriptive words.

Today, I realize that one of the author’s intentions was to explore memory itself and take the reader on a journey through his process around resurrecting his memories. He considered both voluntary memory and involuntary memory. An often recounted episode from his book is the memory evoked when tasting a madeleine cake dipped in tea!

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. … Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? … And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.”
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

WRITING PROMPT:
Invoking a memory is considered a voluntary memory as you have chosen to retrieve a memory from the past and write about it. Proust compares voluntary memory to involuntary memory–which has a visceral quality to it and can therefore be expressed as a vivid and direct experience with greater impact for the writer and the reader.
Have you had this experience…something in the moment triggers an old memory and brings it fully into the present…so much so that all of your senses are awakened around that memory? Have you written it down?

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In the movie Ratatouille, at the end, the food critic is sampling the chef’s ratatouille dish and is transported back to his childhood and the savory comfort food that his mother served him. He is personally comforted by the memory as his tastebuds approve of the dish.

(Click on the play arrow and then click on “YouTube” on the bottom right corner and you will go directly to this clip.)