In the moment

Cats are Masters of "In the Moment" -

they can sit and stare at nothing for hours.

Hello again,

Happy Sunday. What's going on in your world today?

Ever have a tap on your shoulder or a whisper in your ear that when you try to ignore it just becomes stronger or louder? As if the message is determined to make itself heard, no matter how hard you try to ignore it?

A few years ago my friend, Mavis, and I made a pact. Each day we would exercise, meditate, and journal. After 30 days of disciplining ourselves to make time for these practices we agreed were important we would treat ourselves to a fun weekend spent enjoying time together while taking in the Christmas lights of Cape May, New Jersey. It was a win-win proposition. We were successful at keeping our promises and had a lovely, festive weekend.

After that, our pact seemed to lose its steam. I fell away from meditating and exercising. The journaling took longer but eventually faded out of my daily (or weekly) routine. No surprise about the exercising, because, well...let me be honest here. I hate exercising. It's not so obvious to me why I have resisted my journal and my meditation.

Perhaps it's because it requires being focused, being quiet, being still? Being dedicated to being in that moment. Single tasking. After all, isn't the ability to multi-task a valuable skill? Well, yes, I guess it is, at times. But I've found that, for me, it's damn difficult to decide when I need to multi-task and when I would be better served by single-tasking. If I'm talking on the phone, I'm also doing laundry, loading the dishwasher, checking emails, knitting or... you get the picture. And what this ends up meaning, too often, is that I'm not in the moment.

Back to the taps on the shoulder and the whispers in my ear. I received a much-appreciated email from my friend, Journey, who gave me suggestions about how to meditate. My friend, Lorin, has also offered guidance on the subject. Then, this morning, I was reading Creative is a Verb (by Patti Digh). The chapter I was reading today was about actually HEARING what is being said, and getting the messages. The lesson I got from this section was that learning to cut out the brain-cluttering distractions was much like using the Boise Noise Reduction headsets for airline travel. This is a very loose paraphrasing on my part, and doesn't do justice to her description or metaphor comparing the learned stillness to the headsets.

Today I'm going to try being more in the moment. Not zipping and zapping from one task to the next. Maybe I'll even sit down and try to catch some Ommm's.

I don't know that I will ever become good at (or even comfortable with) meditation. For now I'll be happy if it just helps me stop the ADD symptoms of going into a room to accomplish something and becoming so distracted that I forget what I intended to do.

You know...I wouldn't mind having another pact in place to help me feel more accountable.

How often do you find quiet? Are you able to single-task or are you, like me, prone to multi-tasking? Does practice make focusing easier?

Whatever you're doing today...I hope you are aware.

Thanks for visiting.