Category: Being Present

This Thanksgiving I forgot to be thankful. I spent a lot of time cooking, prepping the table, planning logistics of when to put the rolls in the oven, take them out, and warm rest of the food before the rolls cooled. Hosting family and friends on Thanksgiving day, more than a typical get-together, is a hit-the-ground-running affair. But since I didn’t schedule actually pondering my own, and our communal, thankfulness, it didn’t happen. I forgot, and it made me sad.

Two years ago when we hosted Thanksgiving, I made an effort to recognize what exactly we were celebrating. Of pointing everyone’s attention toward gratitude and of listening to each person’s thankful heart. It was memorable. It was bonding. It was what Thanksgiving should be. This year I failed as the ring-leader of gratitude. I made some rockin’ brussels sprouts (yes, that’s possible) but I didn’t host the bigger idea of the occasion, which I think is even more important.

I’m certainly not saying I was actually in charge of others’ thankfulness or lack thereof. And I’m not saying anyone else at the table failed to spend time reflecting personally on their many blessings. But in my experience Thanksgiving tends to be more about food than about a celebration of bounty itself, and I’d like to change that when we’re celebrating in our home. I want to make it about stopping for a moment and truly considering the depth of goodness that surrounds us. As a group. I want my kids to absorb the overflow of thankful hearts and let it color their view of the world, to combat some of the yuck they face in the same world each day. And it was likely more important to do so this year than any in recent memory. Bummer.

I dropped my kids off with my in-laws the weekend before Thanksgiving, and on my drive home through the darkening Flint Hills I listened to a podcast. Krista Tippett from On Being interviewed Irish poet Michael Longley and focused on his penchant for writing beautifully about normal, regular things. His “quiet insistence on celebrating normalcy.” In one significant part of the interview he pointed to the Holocaust as an example of this type of gratitude. “In that kind of nightmare what kept people sane was thinking of the ordinary things back home. And what made things slightly less nightmarish would be securing a toothbrush…”

In contrast to all I have to be thankful for, no matter what is happening in the greater world, this stark reminder of what thankfulness can be whiddled down to was poignant. It seemed an appropriate train of thought before the holiday arrived. I thought about it then, even including the pleasure of listening to Michael Longley reading his own poetry among the list of small but significant delights in a time of disheartenment. But I forgot to think about it on actual Thanksgiving. Not that there’s some sort of magic in being thankful on a particular, set-aside day. And yes, thanksgiving should be an ongoing attitude of the heart. I just wish I would have brought this up on that day, to have createa more memorable occasion. A ceremony of thankfulness, almost.

We still had a lovely time. We somehow avoided discussion of the current political climate (and the younger set of us gained some welcome perspective about an even more contentious period of our nation’s history – the 1960s). It wasn’t void of warmth and kindness and community. I simply wish I would have marked the occasion more clearly. But wallowing gets me nowhere. I’m going to forgive my slip-up and keep this in mind for our next round of hosting. Often our mistakes are what teach us best, and this has shown me that I want to make that which we celebrate on the holiday more central than the way we celebrate it. I still want to eat yummy molasses and oat dinner rolls, but they shouldn’t be the biggest take-away (though the caloric take away from those rolls is pretty great). Forgiven, but not forgotten. Next time. And for this year, better late than never, a list of simple things I don’t want to take for granted…

my comfy bed

green tea

a warm scone

heat and air conditioning

a car that works

wool socks

birds singing

peanut butter

vitamin D

cilantro

a washer and dryer in my house

the sound of Luke playing the piano

the view from my bedroom window

podcasts and long drives through the Flint Hills

 

Feel free to list of a few small-but-significant things you appreciate.

Happy Thanksgiving do-over.

 

I’m sitting in the Denver airport waiting for a flight. On the very edge of this particular terminal, before an entire wall of windows. Looking out into a view of clouds and an expanse of plains. Cars inch along a road in the distance, tiny against the slice of land and the broad swath of sky. Airplanes taxi across runways to my left and right, as if in slow motion. It’s growing dark, the sun easing its way down in the west, the east getting sleepy.

My flight is not for another hour and only a few passengers have made their way to the gate. It is quiet, save the intermittent instructions over the intercom -the quietest experience I’ve had in an airport for years. I’m thankful for this calm descent of day. I’ve had time to sit and think and look out of large windows – one of my favorite past times.

I watched a bunny hop through a construction area and find a home for the night beneath a stack of green fencing. Dozens of workmen labored on the pavement to it’s left, hundreds of passengers, pilots and airport employees walked these terminal halls, and no one saw it but me. This was my experience alone. Insignificant to the world, but significant to myself. The way I love to watch a single cardinal pecking it’s way across my yard. Or a bee visiting each flower in a patch of liriope blooms. Quietly witnessing something so tiny happening at the same time that wars and Wall Street and LA traffic rage on. It’s centering and humbling and enormously pleasant.

I need this. When I moved to Los Angeles at the age of 23 I couldn’t find room to think. Just think. For years. I lost the ability to stop and have some thoughts that weren’t particularly industrious. I didn’t know that was a thing one could need. Thought I was silly to expect such an extravagancy in the bustling, busy world. But I’ve learned that I do, in fact, need quiet reflection for my sanity. And I would argue everyone does. At least it couldn’t hurt. Blame it on my pensive tendencies, or my writer’s heart. Or my humanity. But the bunny and the sky and the yellow plains outside these windows have been like medicine to me this evening. I thought my layover was too long. But it has turned out to be just right.

 

We were both silent for close to a minute. It was the best end to a book I’ve read in a long time and the final words hung in the air. I could taste them. The wisdom they quietly espoused. And I’ve been chewing on them ever since.

 ***

Being present is very popular these days. The phrase has almost become a cliche – something we modern day humans have latched onto as the thing that will solve our problems. Just be present, living in the moment instead of thinking about the past or looking to the future, and all will be well. We will be centered. We will find rest. We can move forward in peace.

I agree with all of this.

Being present is one of the archive categories on this blog, and that category holds the most posts of any other.

But.

I also find value in considering the past and in contemplating the future. Since they are both part of our experience, they both matter. I learn from my past mistakes and successes by pondering them from time to time. I enjoy the promise of hope by wondering at the future. If I don’t dwell in either place only, looking both back and ahead helps balance things. It cannot be all about now all the time. If so, we would learn nothing and would make choices despite the consequences. This is why we develop a prefrontal cortex. Let’s embrace it.

But, again.

Now is now, and that’s good, too.

Sometimes, sitting still in the moment and paying attention is just what’s needed. For me, it’s needed quite often since life is so hectic and busy. Enjoying the now is an art-form I’m trying to refine.

But, contrary to popular belief, being present is not a new concept. Here are several quotes from decades and centuries past, addressing this exact idea…

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.  -Mahatma Gandhi

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.  – Mother Teresa

This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  – Psalm 118:24, ESV

True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.  – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what’s given and delighting in the work. It’s God’s gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It’s useless to brood over how long we might live.  – Ecclesiastes 5:19-20 from The Message

But here’s my new favorite – the last bit of the book Lily and I finished, Little House in the Big Woods, from 1939 …

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?” “They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.” But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting. She thought to herself, “This is now.” She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Now is now and I should try to pay attention. Or I might miss a moment like this. Or like hearing my youngest child breathe her sweet, little-girl breath on my cheek when we’re playing doctor. Or the moment of all my children, and their friends, yelling and singing and running and screaming through the house because they are happy. Or the soft pattering of rain on our skylight when Marc and I have finally fallen in bed after a long, hard day – the house is quiet, no one is asking a question I must field – there’s only my soft bed, my husband’s chest rising and falling beside me, and rain.

There’s a time for everything, including thinking about the past and the future. But now is now. It isn’t before, isn’t later; it’s happening. And I should try to be where life is happening as much as I can. No pressure. No this-is-the-answer-to-everything. Just Here we are. On the top bunk, amongst 27 stuffed animals and my middle child who doesn’t know better than to be totally present, listening to every word.