Right Here, Right Now

Over the last few months, I’ve developed a meditation practice that I do everyday. It’s something that I’ve tried to establish, unsuccessfully, for many years. I’m not entirely sure why, but this time it seems to be sticking.

I’m combining meditation with some simple Tai Chi movements, and that seems to help. But maybe I’m just getting older, and my life has slowed down enough to let my mind be still. In any case, I’m really enjoying it, and I find that it’s helping me in some unexpected ways. 

One thing I’ve realized is that I’m noticing more. Meditation, at its heart, is a way of letting go of the past and the future, and just noticing your experience of the present moment. It turns out, the present moment is where everything happens. The past is like yesterday’s coffee grounds. Yes, technically you can still squeeze something out of them, but is the coffee really worth the squeeze? And the future? That’s just a lottery ticket. It doesn’t matter how many you have, you can’t buy squat with them. 

One thing I’m noticing more often is feelings. Feelings only happen in the present, even if they’re feelings about the future and the past. And when you feel something right now, it has a big impact on what you do right now. That may seem obvious, but so often we fail to notice how we’re feeling and we miss it entirely. Then, after we do something based on those feelings, we don’t really understand why. Instead, we make up a reason--one that invariably makes us look better than we should, or avoids some uncomfortable truth. We make that false narrative our official version of events, and stumble on to our next screw-up no smarter than we started. 

So anyway, I’m meditating now. But I suppose that’s redundant. Meditation only happens now. Just like everything else.