The juicy simplicity of now
my challenge to stay present.
I have a habit of future thinking and wallowing deeply in nostalgia. It’s a weird balance that hangs me in a forever avoidant state of the present moment. My family calls me a dreamer, and they’re not wrong. I spend the greater part of my days reflecting on good memories from years past, and scheming away my dreams for the future. I write pages and pages of visions, and get incredibly impatient with myself when it’s not all happening right now. I do think that it is perfectly healthy (and necessary) to keep an eye on our personal goals, But when speaking with my therapist, she challenged me to explore the value of sitting with the present moment.
I know this practice well. Every yogic path celebrates this work, and I’ve had about a decade’s worth of classes, teachers, and books detailing how to exist within the neutral mind. Observing the breath, feeling its temperature, observing how my belly expands with each inhale and empties out with each exhale. Yet, even with these practices so embedded into my being, I never feel fully settled.
Especially lately. Perhaps it’s the current eclipse season. (Hallelujah that today marks its end.)A time that is making me writhe in my own skin. Maybe it’s the fact that I am disturbed by the way I surrender to a rhythm of working that doesn’t align with my soul. How do I sit with the now when the now deeply frustrates me? How can I just be when that frustration leads me to feeling as though I’ve failed myself in the practice of neutrality and gratefulness? How can I take full breaths in a fluorescent office, and how can I feel presence in stillness when society demands of us constant productivity? I know what I desire to see when dreaming up what it means to live a whole, healthy life, and the way I even think about presence is wrapped up in expectations, thoughts, and to-do lists. I might not know the way, but I do know that all of this is definitely not the way.
In early September, I picked figs off of the tree in our backyard. It was dusk, and a late summer storm had just swept in. I slipped into my crocs and stepped out into the fat rain drops, letting beads of water run down my bare shoulders.
The fruit was finally ripe.
I’ve been checking in on this tree since we moved in in May, and I knew that the little green buds that had formed near the base of the leaves would plump out, and fill in with a rich purple hue. I delicately plucked the fruit from the branches.
I entered the kitchen, proud of my bounty. The figs overflowed a container at the crook of my arm I picked one, pulling apart its supple flesh with my thumbs. I marveled at the brilliant red insides. I showed Dan the fig and excitedly offered him the other half. “Remember when you told me two years ago that you wanted to have a fruit tree in your backyard?” he said. And he was right, this moment was something I had journaled about often. I had always envisioned it slightly different—I wouldn’t be in DC, and my yard would be much larger. The grass would be thicker, greener…plusher under my bare feet. But as I chewed this sweet, ripe fig I thought, here I am, living my dream.
Presence is about the the stillness that lies within us. It is identifying and freeing our sense of sovereignty. This fig tree in my backyard. Listening to our desires to satisfy in the moment, right now, and having faith that the decisions we make will continue us on the right path.
Working with presence is challenging for me. It’s uncomfortable to exist in the mundane daily moments when the highlights are so much more enticing. Although this may be true, I can see how imperative it is to hold on to the vibration of now—with all of its discomforts. Because at the end of the season, there will be figs.
May we all live in the juicy simplicity of now.