Tag: present moment

One Day At A Time

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As some may be aware I am currently in Greece and for the last few days the idea of where I will go next has been on my mind. The exact details of where are not important, that isn’t going to be the point but more everything that goes into making these decisions. In the past I have stressed about where I will go next and over the last ten years there have been a lot of ‘nexts’. As I’ve got older these have evolved from thinking it would be pretty cool and exciting going somewhere to viewing a place with eyes aware that I may settle there. This idea of settling somewhere stresses me out. It influences my decisions massively and it shouldn’t because so far I haven’t stayed in any of these places but also because it’s completely pointless overly concerning yourself with such an unknown.

The problem with this particular unknown though is that it is enormous. When something is enormous we are bound to become overwhelmed by it and allow it to take over our minds completely. Of course you can’t pick somewhere based upon your entire future, it’s an impossible decision to make, too many unknowns and you’re not only choosing an idea but arguably a fantasy. Everything has to be a one day at a time thing. Right now spending too much time thinking about something like this is a waste of energy because you’re currently doing something else and if your mind is absorbed with a future fantasy then you’re not being present. You’re not doing what you need to be doing and you’re not giving what you should be focusing on the time and energy it deserves. Life inevitably starts passing you by as you’re never there to see or experience it.

There is one other slightly unrelated part but I have in the past thought I should return to cold northern places, like Scotland, because we need a little misery and suffering to appreciate real life. Appreciate in the sense of understanding and thinking but I suspect that misses the point. If you’re Nietzsche perhaps this makes some sense but his reality was only one version. The great thinkers so engrossed in the inevitable suffering of existence weren’t all Scottish, Scandinavian or German. The idea then is can you have fun in the sun while at the same time comprehend the pointlessness and absurdity of life. It does conjure up a strange and amusing image. Perhaps you would start comprehending life through a different lens. Maybe all Nietzsche ever needed was to take up windsurfing.

What Now Then Plan Man

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Life is full of lessons. Every day if we choose to look we would see them and one way or another learn something. This year for many has been a learning experience like no other, not more or less than other things but certainly unique. There is nobody who could have predicted what has happened and nobody who couldn’t have learnt at least something from it. The last twenty-four hours has thrown another spanner in my face, or even in the works, let’s call it both.

Strangely enough very little has actually changed. I am supposed to go out to Greece to do a little renovation work on someones boat mid-September. I was going to do a little sailing with a friend for the first week and then work for three. The three was the limit because I had tickets for a comedy show on the 15th October from an already postponed Jonathan Pie performance from April. Unfortunately in the last twenty-four hours all has changed. For family reasons my friend has cancelled the sailing and because of this virus the show has been postponed yet again, this time to May next year. Third time lucky? Perhaps it would be wise not to plan.

That’s it though really isn’t it. Some lessons sneak up on us but some we’re fully aware of as we step into and experience them. Without a doubt I’m fully aware of the futility of planning. I say futility because my track record of never sticking to my plans makes them pointless. One reason I never stick to them is not because I don’t do anything but is down to my acting on a whim as things happen. It makes me wonder if the planning is to create a safety net in my mind as well as allow me to escape and fantasise when life is not so interesting. Currently life is interesting in certain respects but with it being unfulfilling in others I can’t deny I don’t let my mind run sometimes.

This year has made planning anything a complete waste of time. Strangely enough I actually really enjoyed lockdown because I knew I had no options, I was trapped in one place and you can’t make plans when nothing can happen. Traditionally having no options would be a problem but perversely being aware of and being lucky enough to have many creates a different type of pressure and stress altogether. This disappeared and while lockdown brought up different problems, at least the one of options was a weight off my back. “Poor you” I hear you saying and you would be right as there are people trapped and miserable all around the world but stress and weight on you back is still stress and weight on your back.

Anyway, despite little really changing my plans have gone up in smoke once more and something else will happen. Interestingly something else always happens and we just make the most of it as it does. Think of this year and all the new things people have done for example. That’s the beauty of a flexible approach to life but somehow even when that is clearly the way we still manage waste so much time and energy living in little fantasies of what could happen or be happening. It really is so difficult living in the present moment. And to just give an example, I have barely even been present while writing this, the whole time has been spent fantasising about spending the winter diving and sailing in the Canary Islands. The first step to overcoming a problem is to acknowledge the existence of the problem. I have a problem.

To Wash Or To Dream

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I spoke the other day about being present when drinking your coffee or smoking your cigarette. Not only does it allow you to enjoy it more but the act of being present and the resulting benefits to body and mind are invaluable. Today I spent eight hours cleaning bread baskets. It’s not an overly taxing job as there’s a machine you put them in that does all the hard work but without doubt it is monotonous and you spend most of the day being painfully aware of the enormous pile that never seems to get any smaller. In times of monotony we have a habit, or at least I have a habit, of dreaming of adventures in foreign lands, things I would like to incorporate into my life or simply what I fancy eating for my dinner. Today was no different and while some may argue these are great chances to have a really good think about stuff, and there are credible arguments to suggest there is truth in that, it doesn’t allow for the exercise of being present in the moment if you’re living in fantasy land.

Buddhist monks have written, I know because I have seen it, that we should put as much attention into the most menial of tasks as we do the most important of tasks. If we are capable of this, when we really need to focus and be present for something, we are far more practised and it is far easier. That seems to make sense as it can be hard to switch things on and off. On top of that if we are living in fantasy land, or making plans as it’s commonly known, then we’re as far from being present as possible. That of course may not be the aim of life but it’s not a bad thing to try and incorporate a little.

But as I said fantasising can be fun and let’s be honest imagining you’ll be sailing in the sun of Greece soon or sitting on a Costa Rican beach probably trump being stuck away in the north-east of England in the corner of a bakery getting wet monotonously. It would be nice going to Costa Rica though, I’ve heard a great deal about it and it seems like a good place for me to rediscover my love of travel. Plans this year have been somewhat difficult with all these virus shenanigans. In someways it’s been good to break the habit of just disappearing on a foreign adventure the moment I fancy a change from whatever the norm is and knowing planning is pointless, has made me do far less of it which allows me to step out of my head a little more often. Is that a win, just maybe. Did it prevent me dreaming instead of meditatively focusing on each basket, well no of course it didn’t I’m not a Buddhist monk. Alas, one more time I become aware I am but a simple and fallible human.

A Momentary Coffee

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Have you ever got to the end of your coffee and realised you want more. That the desire you had for coffee hasn’t been satiated and you’re not satisfied. As you delve deeper into the thoughts of the moment, that you can actually barely remember drinking the coffee at all. If that is the case there’s a good chance you were also doing something else while drinking the coffee. Perhaps working on your laptop. Maybe drinking your coffee on a long road trip. Or even grabbing a quick sip while doing some gardening. Busy to such an extent we didn’t give even a momentary awareness to the thing we desired, merely hoping to absorb it’s energy induced benefits.

It can’t just be the need to fill the caffeine addicted desire that makes us crave the cup, there must be something else involved like experiencing the taste and the sensations that consuming it provide. If you drink your coffee while completing whatever task you are fulfilling then this lack of focus and awareness of the act of enjoying and appreciating the coffee will be missed and arguably while it may be in your body, you may as well have not even drunk the coffee at all.

You forgot to enjoy the moment you very nearly created, this lack of presence denies existence itself. I’ll have another please.

We live in a world that moves at such speeds that we often don’t allow ourselves the necessary pleasure of just stopping and taking that five minutes to really observe the coffee and appreciate the satiating joy it can provide. So busy we don’t even have five minutes. But we always have five minutes, no one is truly that busy. We just didn’t notice that we wasted that five minutes robotically doing something else. Facebook perhaps.

In the past when I smoked I would have similar realisations. You crave a cigarette but you desire the whole experience not just the nicotine. I would sometimes roll one ‘for the walk’ but while there was a different satisfaction from that version, you still ended up fancying another upon arrival at the destination. There was something that hadn’t been entirely fulfilling about that version of the cigarette, just as there is something lacking from the coffee you forget you’re drinking.

We are so full of distractions. Perhaps we can use things like coffee or cigarettes, both together even, to use as markers to just take that five minutes to bring awareness to our surroundings, thoughts and the moment we’re experiencing. Just five minutes, just the length of time it takes to drink the coffee. There’s thousands of years of wisdom on being present, it can’t all be worthless now we have smart phones.