January 28, 2022

The Present

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about being in the present, on noticing what is happening without judgement or value. I went to a routine check-up on Wednesday and ended up getting (what is likely to be) a routine biopsy on my neck, and I really worked hard to lean into the moment. To consider what was interesting about being brutalized in such a physically uncomfortable fashion. I’ve been working very hard to exist in the present moment rather than my mind rushing me recklessly into a thoroughly unknown future, whether with dread or even just excited anticipation. Yes, I am looking forward to summer, but in the meantime, I want to be here right now. I even want to be okay here right now, instead of waiting for some hypothetical moment when everything is easier and different. I am tired of looking for light at the end of the tunnel instead of being present where I am.

And I’ve been thinking a lot too about perceptions. I just finished the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman, which I loved, and which is about all this. How social media “systematically distorts the picture of the world we carry in our heads at all times. It influences our sense of what matters, what kinds of threats we face, how venal our political opponents are, and thousands of other things…” I was walking home from my medical appointment on a cold but very sunny Wednesday and feeling good, and wondering how that sense is informed by the fact that a month or so ago I was feel really bad, and just the relief of not being there anymore brings on a buzz that’s kind of like bliss. How much my picture of the world is influenced by things like that, and by hormones, and if I’m hungry, and the flow of traffic, and how happy my child might be at any specific moment. By the fact that I’m off Twitter, and I’ve muted anybody’s stories on Instagram who posts about Covid, and that the sun is out, oh my goodness, is there anything else that matters as much as the fact the sun is out?