Right
Here, Right Now
In Zen Buddhism
it’s known as being “in
the moment”. It’s
those rare instances in life
when you’re neither
stressing over the faux pas
you made yesterday or worrying
about making sure that tomorrow
you check how much heating
oil is left in the tank.
It’s experiencing the
life you’re actually
living at that exact moment
you’re living it.
Of
course not everyone’s
life journey takes them to
a Buddhist monastery where
they can work daily to free
themselves of materialism
and meditate on the “now.” As
such, worrying about checking
the heating oil is necessary
in order to prevent one from
being without heat in the
middle of a New England winter
and, as a result, having
to pay the heating oil man
exorbitant sums of money
to perform what is quaintly
referred to as a “bleed
and restart.”
But still – there’s
a distinct difference between
the time you spend worrying
about your life and the moments
you actually live it.
Take
this past week for example.
The reality of having a
7 year old daughter who lives
with her mother is that
what used to be three days
a week is now, because of
school, every other weekend
and a few weeks throughout
the year. The break between
Christmas and New Years is
something I look forward
to because it means that
I get to have all my kids
home and, for a little while
anyway, my family is complete.
That
week is now over and instead
of reflecting on how great
it was, I’m
realizing how very few moments
there were when I was actually “in
the moment”. Rather
than enjoying my daughter,
I worried about how much
of a mess the house was with
two children tearing through
it instead of one. I stressed
over how little work I got
done when, in reality, no
one was working much. I became
preoccupied with how the
lack of work would affect
my bank account at a time
when, frankly, I’m
in better financial shape
than I’ve been in years.
I managed to take my entire
week and fill it with needless
worrying instead of time
with my family.
Admittedly,
being “in
the moment” is not
an easy thing to manage – there’s
a reason the Zen monks sequester
themselves on top of a mountain
to figure this stuff out.
But still... there are a
lot of things that have
fallen by the wayside in
the past few years – time with
family, time for exercise,
time for writing this column.
Some of it was necessary – the
ramifications of losing my
voice and needing to keep
food on the table demanded
focus on the really important
things. And yet, now that
things are going well again,
I find that I still fail
to make the time for the
things that are the very
definition of who I am.It’s time to re-claim
some of what I’ve given
up, time to be more accessible
to my family, time to write
this column again.
It’s time to live
a little more “in the
moment”.
This
Essay © 2006 Lee Totten
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