Hi, my name is Nancy, and I’m trying really hard to learn to
Be in the Moment.
You see, I’m a rusher.
I’m always looking toward the next thing. As I’m getting ready to go somewhere, I’m
thinking about the event. While I’m at
the event, I’m thinking about the stories I will tell my friends about the
event, and how am I getting home.
Reading, I often skim the first line of paragraphs to get
the “gist” of what’s going on, delving deeper if it seems to be important, or scintillatingly
juicy (in the trashy novel genre).
Working on a project, I’m thinking about lunch. Eating lunch, I’m thinking about what I have to
do on the project after.
Funny story, I was writing this in my head this morning
while I was putting on my makeup, and stabbed myself right in the eye with my
mascara wand. Karma, right? You get the gist.
Though this tendency has enabled me to be crowned the “Queen
of good enough”, as with other things, I’m no longer sure this is “good enough”.
So I’ve been trying the last couple of weeks to check in now
and then. To say to myself “stop, be in
this moment” and to actually do it. I
didn’t mention this earlier because I didn’t want you guys to hold me accountable
if it was too hard to do. :-)
You read about “being in the moment”. It’s the holy grail of Happiness, Weight Loss, Inner Peace and Stress Reduction. So when I
engaged in this, I pictured moments like in the scene from the Twilight series where Edward sparkles in the filtered sunlight, with the Gospel Choir from the Chrysler commercial providing background music. And guess what? The first couple of times I consciously did
it, the moment was wonderful. I was in
awe, and wondered why didn’t I do this before?
Look at all I was missing! That
color is so rich, that laugh so bubbly, this tastes incredible, has the sky
always been that blue? Just look at the amazing people I’m with!
Then along came a moment, and without thinking I decided to
actually look at it, and lets just say….it sucked. I could see it clearly, in great detail, like
in triple HD. The colors
were so sharp, the vise around my heart so tight and unrelenting, I tasted bile in my
throat, and the sun was behind a dark foreboding cloud. Starkly apparent were the people that were
missing and would never be physically present again. All the hype for “being in the
moment” didn’t mention: what do you do when the moments suck?
One benefit of rushing means you don’t take a good look at
anything, so though you don’t get the full effect of the beauty, you also don’t
get the full effect of the bad stuff.
Picture Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory in the episode where he
believes he is the flash. Lots of “Bazinga”
but nothing really touched him. This technique
has gotten me through some tough times “good enough”.
But as in painting, only doing “good enough” often means you
have to go back and fix something, and perhaps back again, and again, until you
finally have it right.
We helped my daughter and PSIL (Perfect Son In
Law) with their new house (I’m so freakin proud of them!) this weekend. I was promoted from “totally banned from
painting even primer unless the primer matches the ceiling paint” to “is
allowed to paint with adult supervision”.
Know how? I was in the moment. I paid attention, I looked at what I was
doing, I focused on how the color covered the old paint, I tried very hard
(sometimes failed) to go slow so that things would feather in nicely, and the ceiling
would remain mostly white. There was
very little that needed to be touched up when I was done. ( I can provide references if you don’t believe
me).
Someone posted the following on facebook a few weeks ago:
“Nothing
ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know – Pema Chodron”
I don’t know about you, but I have a list of things I wished
would just go away, now, please. It occurred
to me that maybe this was like painting, that because in the original moment,
and any of the trigger moments (you know those that hit you upside the head
unawares and make you sob like a crazy person in the middle of the Christmas
Tree Shop?), I didn’t pay attention. I
wasn’t in the moment, I rushed away onto the next very important thing I had to do, so there were “holidays” or more probably whole “walls”
that needed to be touched up. OK, there
are a few emotional rooms that only have a foot square sample painted on the wall.
What do you do when you are in the moment, and the moment
sucks? Another of my favorite quotes is “If
you feel like you’re going through hell, keep moving!”. You breathe.
Inhale, Exhale. You fill all your
senses with as much of it as you can take, and then let it go. It’s kind of like going through labor, and
like labor, does not last forever. And
if you can only take some of it today, then good job for doing what you could! But know, there will be more to do on another
day. But that’s OK.
So, my friends, I declare for me that 2013, I’m tossing “rushing”
so much. I’m going to treasure Being In The Moment
more, even when it sucks. I believe that
filling myself with the Beautiful moments, will give me the
reserves I need to deal with the Ugly ones, and truly looking at the Ugly ones, will help me appreciate the Beautiful ones even more.
And may I ditch the title “Queen of good enough”. Wish me luck!
