Lately I have been benefiting from the rich expression that many people seem to be picking up on. It is an idea that will enrich our lives and is necessary for contentment, satisfaction, and well being in a fast paced world of almost unlimited options.
Be fully present.
It is a simple phrase but it runs deep. It is about paying attention. It is about being content in the present circumstances.. It is about letting go. It is about living the lives we are truly in.
But why are we so often consumed by our favorite electronic device or thinking about great ideas we could do some other time? How often are we truly present in the time and place we are in? We live in the age where so much is geared towards saving time, efficiency, and getting through whatever it is we are doing fast. We just want to get it done and move on. But most of the time we have already mentally moved on and are already thinking about our next project, new ideas for another time, other commitments, or appointments we have later in the day.
We call this multitasking. Multitasking usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish. “One should rarely multitask and should instead devote full attention to completing a very small set of defined goals.” --Barry Schwartz
We become a mind divided instead of being fully present and this has statistically been proven to have a negative effect on our welfare. Absent-minded memory failures occur when one is distracted with issues or concerns, and he/she is unable to focus on things needed to remember.
As Henri Nouwen put it, “The trouble is, as soon as you sit and become quiet, you think, Oh, I forgot this. I should call my friend. Later on I'm going to see him. Your inner life is like a banana tree filled with monkeys jumping up and down.”
It is difficult to stay content in our present circumstances when we have so many choices. The average grocery store has over 30,000 different items. (285 varieties of cookies, 75 iced teas, 175 salad dressings, 40 toothpastes 600 kinds of coffee and more than 400 brands of shampoo.) In the US there was a 3x increase in brands on grocery shelves in the 1990’s. It is not just a quantitative change. Now there are also whole new domains of life where people used to have no options and now they have significant options. Phones (was just the phone company and one phone), healthcare (we choose and not the doctor now. We choose through advertisements how to make the choice of all the different drugs), physical appearance (no part of body that can’t be altered. How we look is now ‘a matter of choice’ and if we are unattractive ‘it’s your fault’.), work (we can now work all the time, even if we don’t say yes we still are thinking about it), pensions, when to have kids and start a family (no default), our identity (who do I want to be today? We can reinvent ourselves on a daily basis. We encourage people to redefine themselves and transform),
What this means is that young people spend an enormous amount of time thinking about things that were non-decisions 30 years ago. They are growing up in a world where there is much greater choice. Unfortunate consequence is an increased restlessness and lack of contentment.
The more choices we have the worse we feel about the decision we make. Any choices that are not perfect it is easy to imagine that the alternative would have been perfect and the more alternatives there are the easier to imagine this. How can we be content when the grass could be so green? We expect perfection.
The consumerist society we live in moves us to be more self focused and dissatisfied.
Choices make us less contented with the place we are in. If we are able to choose from only two cereals we will probably be content with the one that we picked, knowing it is better than the other, but if we choose from two hundred cereals than we will probably not be content with that cereal because we will think “how could this be the best one?” If we always have the choice of listening to music or playing video games how much harder is it to be content without them?
If reside ourselves to be “fully present” in our current circumstances instead of thinking of all of the other stuff we could or should be doing right now we will be more content and find more satisfaction in all of the things we do instead of moving from one thing to the next without ever really enjoying any of them.
How do we keep this flood of ideas and possibilities from ruling over us? I once thought that the more freedom I had the happier I’d be but the truth is that there is a limit to the amount of freedom that is good for us. We need boundaries. We unknowingly crave boundaries. We need to set limits on ourselves so that we can focus on what is important. We are limited. If we do not set boundaries we will do what is the most urgent but not necessarily what is the most important. We often don’t know our own limitations, especially in our youth. We try to do more than we can. The result is partial or surface completion of many things instead of a depth and fullness that can only be achieved with focused attention and setting boundaries. We need commitment so that we will not always be wondering if this is the right place for us.
We need to write down the open loop or obsession or task, thus getting the monkeys out of our brains and into a trusted place.
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear… do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
“It's not easy to sit and trust that in solitude God will speak to you— not as a magical voice but that he will let you know something gradually over the years. And in that word from God you will find the inner place from which to live your life.
Solitude is where spiritual ministry begins. That's where Jesus listened to God. That's where we listen to God.
Sometimes I think of life as a big wagon wheel with many spokes. In the middle is the hub. Often in ministry, it looks like we are running around the rim trying to reach everybody. But God says, "Start in the hub; live in the hub. Then you will be connected with all the spokes, and you won't have to run so fast."
Human beings and not human doings
Present-
The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want
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