I spend an inordinate amount of time looking down the road with binoculars. As a result, I’m great at planning and foresight, strengths that I use in every avenue of life.
When it comes time to pack for a vacation or plan for a party, I can make a list that would bring you to tears with its thoroughness and thoughtfulness. In my work, I can take a big project and break it down into actionable tasks automatically, because I am truly gifted at seeing what’s coming and how it might play out.
The problem with spending your life looking through binoculars at what’s coming is that it’s easy to miss where you are, right now. Sometimes, that’s a relief. When things are stressful or overwhelming, looking down the road is a welcome escape. But, in those moments, the lens tends to get clouded with fear and anxiety about what lies ahead. The stress and emotion of the current moment doesn’t get resolved, and it hangs on with you to deal with later, which is more work than if you’d just experienced it fully right then.
Keeping your eyes cast down the road also robs you of the enjoyment of the right now. I can get so lost in my mind some days that I recognize that I’m completely missing how great life is in this very moment. The amount of time I spend planning and scheming amazing moments and the amount of time I spend actually enjoying and absorbing those experiences has historically been completely unbalanced.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about being more present in the current moment since the beginning of the pandemic. It has been easy to spiral out as my anxiety grabs control of my mind, thinking about all the possible negative outcomes of the coming year. I’ve clung closely to things I don’t want to lose, rather than settling in and enjoying them while making peace with the fact that, eventually, all things will pass away. I long to be done giving over mental real estate to the fear of losing something good rather than simply enjoying it and being grateful it exists today.
Truthfully, this is a practice I’m actively growing in, I’m no expert. I’m trying to be more aware of the moments when I’m surrendering my mind to worry and fear, to planning and scheming, to the moments I’m choosing “there” rather than “here.”
When I choose to be here, I root myself in my body, noticing my physical being and the sensations of being in the actual moment. I try to release judgment of myself or others, letting go of the idea that something is good or bad, only noticing it with curiosity.I notice how the air feels as it fills my lungs, the feeling of the weight of my body as it meets the ground. I listen to the sounds I hear, noticing the things I filtered out before. I breathe in the fragrance of my environment and give way to memories that a certain smell might trigger. I look closely at the scenery around me, the way the light plays in the space, the way my children look at this exact moment.
After just a few minutes, I feel calmer and more at peace with where I am right now. I remember that this moment is the one I was worrying about last week or last month, and I begin to enjoy the things that are good or fine or not as hard as I had feared. And, when they are truly hard, I remember that the hard times are rare and will also pass away, that the good moments will return in new and unexpected ways.
