What if this moment is the only one you have?
How to be in the life that you’re living.
This is not an essay about living life to the fullest. I won’t be recommending cliff diving or living each moment like it’s your last. This essay is about experiencing the life that you are already in.
As someone who has used “busy” as a numbing technique throughout my life, I have first hand experience with going through the day, but living in the future, always thinking five steps ahead. “I can rest when I finish this thing.” “Next week I’ll have more time.” “We can get together when this project is done.”
The promise of more time tomorrow is a lie I have told myself over and over. There is always something filling up that imaginary time when I get there. Staying busy keeps me from feeling, because feeling is hard. The problem with this pattern is that I am not experiencing the life that I’m living.
We only have this moment.
All other moments are out of reach. The past has already happened. The future may never happen. This moment is where we are and where we have control over ourselves. When you bring your mind into the moment you’re in, your mind and body connect. You are living your life, experiencing your life, and noticing that life. It’s so simple, yet so hard to put into practice. It has taken me a LOT of practice.
In my 20s I used to rush from one thing to the next all day long. I had my routine timed to the minute. If anything got in the way, like traffic or a train delay, I was screwed. My schedule, thrown completely off kilter. I was never in the moment, my brain was always ahead, thinking about where I was going, and what was coming next.
It wasn’t until I started practicing yoga, and later meditation, that I learned both the joy and pain of being present in my life. When your mind is constantly ahead of where you are, or stuck in the past, you miss the present. The present can be wonderful. Spending time with my kids and loved ones fills my heart. It can also be painful, especially when I stop to feel my grief, anger, or fear.
Humans are feeling beings
I remember listening to a lecture by Brene Brown where she said that although we think of ourselves as rational beings, we’re actually fueled by our feelings. It’s our emotions that make us who we are. You can’t rationalize your way out of anxiety, you need to stop and feel it. If you don’t, it clouds every decision you make and every action you take.
The only way to manage feelings is to feel them. You can suppress them for a while, but they eventually come back to bite you. And at that point they are bigger and even less rational than before. I used to suppress my feelings because, as a child, I learned it wasn’t safe for me to express my feelings. Neither of my parents dealt well with their own feelings, let alone mine, so I learned to stuff them down. I ate them, I stayed busy so I didn’t have to feel, I kept to myself.
Now I understand the value of feeling them. Still it can take me a few days to sort them out and understand what I’m feeling, but I get there eventually. Because “busy” helped me numb for so long, I have found the way through the feelings is stillness.
Sitting still forces me to notice what is happening right now, in the moment that I am in.
I notice how my heart feels. When I feel the heaviness, tightness, or squeezing sensation, I allow it to be just as it is. Where I used to avoid the feeling with food, alcohol, or other things, I now let it be. Sometimes it’s a big sensation that leaks out through my eyes. Other times it’s smaller, like a whisper. Either way, once I feel it, and breathe, it generally moves on and I feel at peace.
40 years of numbing my feelings didn’t disappear overnight, it took practice. It took forgiving myself for reverting back to old habits and trying again. It took having compassion for myself, realizing that this is a process. A never ending process that I don’t have to judge myself through but I can love myself through.
I came to understand that zipping through my life wasn’t serving me, and that when I stopped and looked around every once in a while (to take the advice of the Yogi sage Ferris Bueller), I could acknowledge and admire what I had worked so hard to build.
I noticed what worked and what didn’t.
That’s when I noticed I had become a shell of myself in my marriage. It took awhile, but I eventually noticed when my marriage stopped working and did something about it. When my youngest went off to college I moved into my own place and have felt free ever since.
It is so easy to go on autopilot, and coast through your life. But then you miss it. It’s easy to get lost in your phone or computer, ignoring the relationships around you. Ignoring yourself and your own needs. I did this for more years than I care to say out loud, and I am still working hard to stay awake and present in my life. But experiencing my life as it happens is part of my yoga practice.
Each day is a new opportunity to try again.
That’s why we practice yoga and/or meditation. What you practice on the mat, you take with you off the mat and into your life. Otherwise, you could just do step aerobics. Yoga is cross training for life, both physically and emotionally.
If you’d like to join me on the mat, check out the online classes at Purple Room Yoga. I teach classes for active adults over 50 who want to build and maintain strength and balance while improving mobility. I teach practical yoga flows that leave you feeling energized yet relaxed and calm. Click the button below for a 10 day Free Trial!
