Everyone is too busy all the time. We have become a nation of multi-taskers. By definition, multi-tasking means the mind is divided and not fully focused on any one event. A very simple definition of mindfulness is doing one thing at a time. If we are planting some turnips, we are doing it properly. If we are reading to a child, that is all we are doing.
I have a long history of doing two or three or seventeen things at once. I am cooking, but planning my next road trip. I am talking on the phone, but wondering if I have a can of tuna handy for lunch. I am bird-watching, but worrying if I have offended someone. I am walking, but even as I smell the French lilacs in the air and notice the heron on the lake, I am thinking of presidential politics. Yet slowly I am discovering that life is best when I am one place at a time; that is to say that when I am cooking, I am cooking. Well, okay, maybe stirring and listening to the radio, but I am not planning a Father's Day party for the extended family.Sometimes inhabiting the moment is simple indeed. We hear Louis Armstrong or Chopin on the radio. We taste our lover's kisses, the pomegranate juice or the salt air. We smell the sage or the jasmine blossom.
Animals can pull us into the moment. One of the reasons pets are so popular is that when we are with them, we share their pleasure in being here now. Pets do not live in clock time, and they allow us to rest from chronological time. We join them in older, animal rhythms.
On winter nights, Jim and I sit in our recliners and look out onto the snow and the lake. We wait for our local fox to appear. When he comes, he runs along our south fence toward the lake. He is the color of a shadow and his fur fluffs out like feathers. He trots onto the dam, runs in tight circles, then pounces on whatever prey is available. Within a few seconds he is gone. Afterward, having seen the fox, we are as giddy as children.
Most people respond to wild animals the way we do. I think it is because, deep within us, we carry something far more ancient than human thoughts. Animal spottings, whether of eagles, grizzlies or dolphins, remind us of our ancient selves. Primordial appreciates primordial. We have a moment to connect to something older than our culture, our history and our short lives.
Because children live in the present, we can join them in fresh experiences. Until they are educated away from living in the moment, that is their natural place. Just recently, I drove my grandchildren to the Ozarks for a family reunion. Eating a chocolate doughnut at our Days Inn and thinking about swimming with her newfound cousins, three-year-old Claire said, "My heart is snuggling inside me." Then she realized this didn't quite express what she was experiencing in her chest. She said, "My heart feels very big right now." Her life was not so complicated that she couldn't recognize the physical sensations of joy....
To create moments in our daily lives, we must have a new set of skills for making magic out of the ordinary. The more moments we find, the more we learn to find them.
Source: Seeking Peace
by Mary Pipher
