Today

Life has felt like a long checklist. Go to school. Check. Go to graduate school. Check. Get a job. Check. Get a partner. Check. Save for retirement, get a car, open a credit card. Check, check, ch- just kidding, I still don’t have a credit card.

As we all check off our lists, we spend the weekdays wishing for Fridays and the weekends dreading Mondays. A past manager of mine started almost every morning meeting noting how close or far we were in the week from Friday. Nothing really lights up my soul like wishing a day away before it even starts, especially when the speed of time is already one of my greatest sources of anxiety.

Through the social conditioning of our rat race culture, I learned to view each day as a means to and end. My days served the function of getting me closer- to graduation dates, to weekends, to vacations, to new jobs, to summer, to anything other than what I was experiencing in the moment (aka reality). The incongruence of being physically present in the day but mentally absent made me feel untethered. I was continually disappointed and disillusioned to realize I was chasing a mirage. A completed check-list item did not actually make me as joyful or satisfied as I had thought. I was just left with the empty feeling of wanting more.

I knew there were other ways of being, especially from my knowledge and experience with the practice of mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness reminds me that the most important moment is the present moment, thinking about the past and future is futile because neither exists in the present. Mindfulness also brings me back to my body, and my body functions only in the here and now, operating like as my personalized present moment feedback machine. 

५

I was sitting, very mindfully, on the patio at my parent’s house reading a book in the morning sun. Along with the book, I had a cup of tea in my lap. My feet were propped up on a patio chair, out just enough from the awning to catch warmth from the sun. I heard the birds, saw the new, green leaves on trees, and smelled a mix of dirt, flowers, and fresh-cut grass. I wrote this poem:

The smile that spreads across my face when I hear birds overhead,

The deep belonging I feel in my body when I am in the presence of trees,

The peace that arises when I lift my chin and only see the horizon.

The world offers me every feeling I am striving for, at no cost, every day.

    “Show up as you are,” she says, 

    “Drop everything you think you need to be;

    I will show you who you are.”

    The natural world is patiently waiting for me to see

    All of my grinding,

    my pushing, pushing, pushing,

    the trying to build and become,

    has no purpose or meaning among the trees.

    I do not need to earn 

    my worth,

    my peace,

    or my belonging.

    I only need to look up, look around, look inside

    to see,

    I have already been given everything I am searching for.

I had an “ah-ha” moment on that patio. It became so clear and obvious: all of these feelings I thought I would have and all of the things I thought I would become when I reach the (elusive) end of the check-list, are available every day, at every moment. The day is not a means to an end; each day is an end itself. Feelings of peace, joy, or worthiness are not earned, and searching for what we desire in anywhere other than the present moment will leave us dissatisfied and disillusioned. Our options are right now or never.