Here and Now

I am reading a book The Practicing Mind. Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life by Thomas M. Sterner. It is about how to achieve goals without being obsessed with the end product but rather enjoying the process, the journey that leads to this goal. The premise is that people want an instant result and do not develop the skill of working hard towards their dreams. It is also about how we find difficult to be in a moment having all these disruptions around, emails to answer, phone calls to return, worries to ponder over. And as much as all above mentioned are important, what really matters is the present moment. NOW. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. NOW. Neither past nor future, but now. With the help of this and other book, talks with inspiring people I think I am getting better and better with now. Because now has become very important to me.

This is how I practice. 

In the morning when I wake up, depending how late I am for work, I would find a minute to stay in my bed and remind myself where I am: Toronto, Canada, this and that day. I lead this internal dialogue telling myself what I will be doing next: step by step: now you are going to try to find all the pieces of your garment and put them together in a coherent outfit, then you are going to brush your teeth, and run/bike to work. 

When biking to work, I sometimes find myself already on College and Spadina without even noticing how I got there, which is a message that I haven't been paying attention but instead I had been thinking of something or somebody else. So then I say to myself: ok, now you are riding a bike. You are going to work. Oh, look, there's the CN tower over there, now lest's turn into the Beverly Street, then Cecil, then Baldwin, through University and Bay into the Elm where you leave the bike. Oh, look what a beautiful light on the building. Remember this, you will never see it again. And here is a lady you pass every day who yelled at you once for riding on the pavement and you weren't very polite to her which probably is why she never scolded you again. The internal dialogue continues. I also take pleasure of the wind on my skin and try to really feel it:  is it warm, cold, sticky or dry? All this reminds me that I am, here and now, at the given moment and that I recognize that I am in this moment. Here and now.