Life Lesson #6: Be Here Now
If you missed any previous posts in this series, you can find Life Lesson #1: Show Up With What You Have and Use It Well HERE, Life Lesson #2: Everyone Matters HERE, Life Lesson #3: Be Playful and Laugh at Yourself HERE, Life Lesson #4: Give Yourself What You Need to Do Your Best HERE, and Life Lesson #5: Get Comfortable With Fear HERE.
If you missed any previous posts in this series, you can find Life Lesson #1: Show Up With What You Have and Use It Well HERE, Life Lesson #2: Everyone Matters HERE, Life Lesson #3: Be Playful and Laugh at Yourself HERE, Life Lesson #4: Give Yourself What You Need to Do Your Best HERE, and Life Lesson #5: Get Comfortable With Fear HERE.
When I'm onstage, it's one of the only times in my day where I'm completely in the moment. If I think about my grocery list, what I need to get done at work the following morning, or even what my lines in the next scene are, I will lose my place and come tumbling out of that wonderful space where everything just is. I have to continually focus on what I am saying in this moment, what my scene partners are saying at this moment, and if I do that, usually the rest will take care of itself just fine. In my opinion, if you are worried about a performance, that's the single most important thing that you can focus on: just being here now, in this room with these people, really listening to what they are saying and really responding back to them. It sounds simple and feels so impossible at the same time. But you have control over it and the more you practice, the better you get.
There are so many benefits from being present. I can recall single moments onstage with more clarity than I can remember some years of my life. I need to learn to apply being present to my daily life so that I can soak in all the people and things around me. I have been building up a meditation practice, and that helps. I've got a long way to go, but the tiny slivers of peace and presence I've experienced by trying to just "be here now" have convinced me it's a path I want to keep journeying on.
I wish you a Sunday in which you relish each moment, whatever you are doing. Close this blog post, put down your phone, and just be in the space where you are, with whomever is there, even if it's just you. Really watch your child as she or he draws a picture, see your cat sleeping in the patch of sunlight on the floor, and taste the food you are eating. If you're binging on Netflix, relish each moment of that too. Don't feel guilty while you do it, or try to pay bills online, or fold laundry at the same time. Just be absorbed by whatever it is that you are doing. If you need help with getting started, ask yourself what is it that you do that completely draws you in, an activity where you seem to lose track of time and of self-consciousness? Try to do something like that as often as you can, and let the focus and presence you have while doing a beloved activity bleed into other activites that you don't love.
Each moment in our life is singular and we can't relive any of them again. But if we learn to be more present, we will be able to let these experiences really permeate our scattered, over-scheduled selves, and their vividness will not fade. In that way, we can keep them forever because they will become part of our selves.
Be here now.
A little Sunday listening--George Harrison's "Be Here Now".
There are so many benefits from being present. I can recall single moments onstage with more clarity than I can remember some years of my life. I need to learn to apply being present to my daily life so that I can soak in all the people and things around me. I have been building up a meditation practice, and that helps. I've got a long way to go, but the tiny slivers of peace and presence I've experienced by trying to just "be here now" have convinced me it's a path I want to keep journeying on.
I wish you a Sunday in which you relish each moment, whatever you are doing. Close this blog post, put down your phone, and just be in the space where you are, with whomever is there, even if it's just you. Really watch your child as she or he draws a picture, see your cat sleeping in the patch of sunlight on the floor, and taste the food you are eating. If you're binging on Netflix, relish each moment of that too. Don't feel guilty while you do it, or try to pay bills online, or fold laundry at the same time. Just be absorbed by whatever it is that you are doing. If you need help with getting started, ask yourself what is it that you do that completely draws you in, an activity where you seem to lose track of time and of self-consciousness? Try to do something like that as often as you can, and let the focus and presence you have while doing a beloved activity bleed into other activites that you don't love.
Each moment in our life is singular and we can't relive any of them again. But if we learn to be more present, we will be able to let these experiences really permeate our scattered, over-scheduled selves, and their vividness will not fade. In that way, we can keep them forever because they will become part of our selves.
Be here now.
A little Sunday listening--George Harrison's "Be Here Now".
Wrapping up the blog series tomorrow with the final post Life Lesson #7: Trust. Happy Sunday!
