Category Archives: Mindfulness

Just One More Minute

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bed

I slept in this morning. I typically get up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, weekdays and weekends, but there are some mornings when I just don’t want to get up, and I don’t have to, so I sleep in. All I have to do is say to Eric, “I’m staying in,” and he turns off the light, hustles the dogs out, takes care of their breakfast and Dexter’s medicine for me. When they are done eating, Sam (the baby of the family, but maybe the laziest of us all) comes back and gets in with me. This, the comfort of a dog sleeping next to me, makes it even easier to drift back to sleep, to stay in.

From time to time I wake up, always thinking to myself “just a few more minutes.” It’s so cozy and nice, and I don’t really have anywhere else I have to be right now. This “just a few more minutes” typically becomes at least two extra hours of sleep. On days like this, I’ll tease Eric if he takes a nap, saying I already took mine.

After I got up, I was thinking about this “just a few more minutes.” I was thinking about all the other places this manifests. I remember every kid I’ve ever known begging for a few more minutes of play, just one more half hour of TV, just one more book, just one more cookie. I was thinking of the other ways it comes up for me, just one more bite, just one more page, just one more mile, just one more episode of whatever show is on HGTV as I ride the elliptical at the gym, just one more day. Grief arises as I think of those I’ve lost, how we both wished for more time, another day, another moment, just a few more minutes here together, how those lives were over too soon, how there was so much more living and loving to do, how hard I prayed that they be given more time, how angry and hurt I still am that it was denied.

fieldofgrass

This is where we live our lives, in these few minutes. If we are lucky, we have a succession of them, minute after minute, moment after moment, but our experience is only in this single, small measure of time. One breath, one beat of the heart, one flash of experience, one chance, one kind act, one moment of connection and compassion. We long for there to be another that follows it, but the wisdom that lives deep in our soft animal belly knows that we must savor this one, the one just now, to squeeze everything out of it we can, to really see it, to notice, to open our heart to it, because this is all we can be sure of. In this moment, we can know that we are here, we can be here, brave and open and vulnerable and tenderhearted.

What do you plan to do with your one minute, kind and gentle reader?

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~From Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: The way to get more time is to pay attention. This won’t be news to some. I am sure it is ancient wisdom, something so many others figured out long ago, but it just came to me this morning. We took a different section of trail on our walk, Dexter wanting to go right next to the river instead of up higher. Even though that span is about the same length as our regular route, I noticed how much longer it seemed like it took us to get to the bridge. And then I realized why–normally when we walk, the same path as we do every day and have hundreds of times, I don’t really pay attention. I am spacing off, day dreaming, planning, complaining, prewriting, and I hardly notice my feet moving. But changing the route woke me up, I was connected to where I was and what we were doing, what was happening…and time stretched and expanded. When you are mindful, in the moment and present, you experience the truth, the full measure of every moment.

2. Truth: Three deep breaths reveals the truth of things. Yoga, meditation, writing, and long walks with my dogs–all of my practices do the same. It’s during these specific activities (except for the occasional mindless walking as described above) that I connect with reality, that my mind and body are in the same place, at the same time. Sometimes when I take three deep breaths, I relax and feel lighter, and other times, I start to cry; always, it reveals what is waiting, just below the surface, for me to notice. Learning to stay with it has been so difficult, yet so important. It is in those moments I am alive, awake and open. What else is there?

3. Truth: I don’t need to become something else, because I am already. Again, this is ancient wisdom, not news to many, but I am only now wrapping my head around the idea that what I am meant to be is already there, only needing to be acknowledged and exposed, embodied and manifested rather than collected or earned. I don’t need to change, to improve, to be different. Jonathan Fields wrote a blog post about this the other day, and I keep reading and rereading it. He says “the process of coming alive isn’t about becoming, it’s about uncovering” and

[W]ho you’re meant to be has always been there… the Work lies in reclaiming the ability to see it. In chipping away all the stuff that gets caked on as you go through life. The wounds, the limitations born of the desire to be accepted at any cost, the heartbreak-fueled shrinking away. The psychic grit that comes to form a barrier so opaque as to obscure not only your ability to see, but be who you are.

And, Marianne Williamson says “Now, in this moment, you are who you have always been and will always be. All spiritual practice — forgiveness, meditation and prayer — is for the purpose of training the mind to see through the illusions of a world that would convince you otherwise.”

One wish: That we can all slow down, sink in, show up, stay and connect with reality, with who we are and with what is. Life is beautiful and brutal, tender and terrible–may we keep our hearts open.