Dealing with Big Problems 7 – staying present part 1

Babies live in the here and now. They cry if they are cold, hungry or wet. The problem is resolved, they stop crying and feel happy again. They don’t remember the unpleasant feelings they had just a few moments ago, and they certainly don’t worry about future hunger, cold or discomfort. But we all know that, gradually, as we grow up, we become aware that we are a separate human being and we lose absolute faith that our carers will look after our every need. Small children learn to worry about being separated from their mothers, school, nasty things a friend has said. They are already aware of past and future, and allow themselves to be torn away from the present by memories of the past and fears about the future.

And, by the time we are adults, we are expert at living far away from the here and now. We may be racked with resentment about things that have happened in the past, sometimes many years ago. The past can also drag us away from the now in the form of regret and self pity. Fear, anxiety and worry usually fast-forward us into the future. We may be afraid of a phone call we have to make in a minute, anxious about the week ahead, or worried that our financial situation will worsen over the coming year. It’s quite common to bounce between past regrets and future worries with only the most cursory acknowledgement of the now.

I know this because I have missed weeks, months, maybe years of my life doing this. Turning over and over in my mind the many past events that I still found painful, reminding myself about what I saw as failures and wishing that things had gone differently. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was worrying about the future. Tomorrow, next week, next year. Paying so much attention to the past and the future that I never noticed that now was actually OK.

Things got a lot better when I learned about living in the day. I was lucky enough to be told, forcefully, by many people, that these 24 hours are all that we have and that if we live them well we don’t need to worry about the future or dwell on the past. What a relief; of course I didn’t just stop thinking about the past and future but I did learn that this ingrained habit is unnecessary and damaging.

Then, I read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Wow, what a revelation! This very moment, this instant that we are living in, right now, is all that there is. The past and future exist only in our imagination. If you really sit down and think what that means, it can be dizzying. I can remember a moment when I visualised myself hurtling through time, perched on an instant called “now”, with nothing behind me and nothing in front of me because those things we call past and future are just pictures I create in my head. And at that moment, I actually grabbed the arms of the chair I was sitting in because this thought, this understanding, tipped the world as I knew it upside down.

Now, of course I still think about the past and the future. Sometimes a lot. It’s necessary to plan and sometimes it helps to reflect, and sometimes I lose myself in brooding and apprehension. Did you see that? I said “lose myself”; that’s exactly what happens! But these days I do often remind myself of that moment when I really understood that the past and present are just fictions, and bring myself back to now. Today, I have a choice. We all do.

But it’s not just the now that we need to stay in. I call this tool “staying present” because I need to be here as well as now. Present is being in the here and now. I remember so clearly the day I learned about being here. I was at an event with a member of my family who is known for being outspoken and sometimes controversial. I sat next to him as he talked to the group, and worried that he would say something that people would not like. I wanted everyone to like him and I didn’t want him to upset anyone. And then when people from the group responded, I worried about what each person was about to say and whether they would object to my relative’s comments, and whether they would upset him. I started to get really uncomfortable. I was sitting in my chair but in my head I was trying to control what each person said and keep everything nice and happy. Then, the moment came when I said to myself, “Harriet, just sit in your chair!” Ah, the relief! I hadn’t realised that, although I was physically sitting in a chair, my mind was somewhere else entirely.

And of course this can happen on a larger or grander scale. Who hasn’t been on holiday and worried about what is going on at work, how much mail is piling up at home, and whether the dog is OK in kennels? And then we bring ourselves back to the sea, the mountains or the foreign city and realise that we have been “miles away”. Another common phrase that shows we all do this far too often.

So we don’t just miss the present moment, we miss out on what is happening in the place where we are. We allow ourselves to be whisked “miles away”. Sometimes this doesn’t matter, if the daydream is pleasant and if we are not missing anything lovely, important or uplifting. But, all too commonly, there is stress attached to our lack of presence. This may be because we are fretting about things we can’t change in the past or can’t influence in the future, or it may be simply because we are too busy turning things over in our minds when it is actually a time to be still, quiet and calm.

In my next post about presence I’ll tell you exactly how I learned to become more present and make some helpful suggestions, and it would be wonderful to hear how you become present, too. Please leave me a comment and let me know.