Being Where We Are.
Are you here?
Right now, are you here…or are you somewhere else?
Maybe you are really back in school, wishing you had made a different choice in what you studied, wondering what career you would have now.
Or maybe you see yourself sitting in a car with a boyfriend who has just asked you a very big question. What if you had answered differently?
You could be at the beach, at that great vacation you took so many years ago, watching your wife and smallest child romp in the waves, so sure that life held so much promise for you and your family, not knowing the sadness that lie ahead.
If you are somewhere else in your mind, you are not here. It sounds obvious. Yet we can spend so much of our lives in this mental limbo, which is unfortunate as our lives go quickly enough.
Studies show we spend more than one-half of our waking hours, and one-third of our lives, daydreaming. It can make us more creative. But it can also churn up a lot of anxiety and regret.
Why did I move there? Why did I not go on that trip? What would have happened had I gone to the doctor earlier? Can I not hit a reset button and take back those awful things I said?
We daydream less as we get older. This is primarily thought to be because so many daydreams are about what we want to do in the future, and there is simply less of that. (The flip side is in many cases we have done those things, or at least now have the ability to do them.)
Stress can increase daydreaming. Sometimes our subconscious uses this to give us solutions to problems that are vexing us.
In itself, daydreaming is not inherently bad for us. But constantly second-guessing ourselves and fretting about whether we made a wrong turn can make us feel lost, scattering our thoughts until we feel like we are unraveling.
Professor, Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center, and On Being columnist Omid Safi offers this:
“So much of our lives are spent in a fractured state of heart. We are, too often, scattered. We speak about being scatterbrained. The truth of the matter is that the scatteredness is much more systematic. We are scattered at every level: body, soul, mind, spirit.
“We do this to ourselves. We throw ourselves to the past, often clinging to a past pain and trauma. Or, we hurl ourselves towards the future, attaching ourselves to a hope for the future, or fear of losing something. We are in the past, or in the future, everywhere but here.
“To pray with the heart, to have presence in the heart, is a remedy. It is a healing, an un-scattering. Presence is simply to have our heart be where our feet are.”
So much energy spent on things we cannot control. Things that have already occurred. Or things that will go the way they should, regardless of what we do.
Wherever we are, it is good because it is where we are. We have to find some peace with it.
Breathe.
Quiet the mind.
Feel the earth beneath us.
Let the heart rest.
Then, perhaps a new way will open that will take us where we want to go.
Or a door to the past will close that will let us heal.
But it all starts with now. Right here.
Safi also says:
“The inner and the outer are reflected in each other.
When we are internally divided, we will be externally divided.
If we wish to be united as a human community, we have to strive for unity and healing at the heart level.
We need the prayer of the heart.
By whatever form we pray, we need to become whole.
May it begin one breath at a time.
May it begin with me.”
“Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment, fully alive, fully aware.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
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