Be Where You Are

Be Where You Are — The wise per­son does not know the des­ti­na­tion. The wise per­son does know where he or she is now.

There’s a bit of irony in the ideas above. And in the lead photo…

For­ev­er, Bud­dhists have declared that the jour­ney is not the destination–one formulation:

The major irony is that all of us know the “destination” of our walk through life — for all of us, the destination is death.

Let’s look at the two sen­tences above, and see what we shall see.

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Back in the ear­ly 80’s, I was a mem­ber of an Artist’s Group. We exhib­it­ed our “stuff” through­out South­ern Ontario. One of the guys in the group was friends with Peter Etril Sny­der, an Ontario painter of (or at least he was well-known for) Men­non­ite scenes.

“Uncle Pete” would attend some of our group meetings, and would repeatedly ask, “What’s your plan?”

Uncle Pete had dreamed up his plan in Uni­ver­si­ty, and lived it. He thought each of us should also have an “art pro­duc­tion plan.”

But the paradox or irony of planning is important to examine.

The para­dox of plan­ning is the one John Lennon not­ed back in 1980, and expressed as he sang, “Life is what hap­pens to you while you’re busy mak­ing oth­er plans.” Despite his whole life hav­ing come full circle–he was hap­pi­ly mar­ried and joy­ous at being a dad–“real” life hap­pened in the form of Mark David Chapman.

I’m not try­ing to be mor­bid here, despite the death ref­er­ence. The prob­lem is with “des­ti­na­tion think­ing,” (as well as “past obsessions.”)

The problem with either approach is that your eyes are exclusively focussed on the past or the future.

I saw this espe­cial­ly graph­i­cal­ly as clients wres­tled with mak­ing choic­es. Many were so fear­ful of the future that they want­ed an iron-clad guar­an­tee before they would move an inch.

The second problem with a past and/or future view is that choice-ful living becomes impossible.

We make choice-ful liv­ing impos­si­ble by blam­ing: our upbring­ing, nature, genet­ics and “all the peo­ple out to get me.”

AND, if I am look­ing ahead at an imag­ined des­ti­na­tion, or am root­ed in place, fear­ful­ly wait­ing for just the right time and oppor­tu­ni­ty to act, I can also imag­ine that no one can “blame me” for where I am.

Focussing on end­less sto­ries about life con­se­quences gets me off of the hook for ever hav­ing to act and for ever hav­ing to be responsible.

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How to Be Where You Are

There is a real shortage of folk who have a clue about where they are now.

Most peo­ple seem to treat “here and now” as if it is irrel­e­vant, unin­ter­est­ing and “about putting in time until I get to the good stuff.”

Peo­ple will say,

• “Some­day I’ll have a good rela­tion­ship,” or
• “I had­n’t noticed how stiff and locked up and sore I am until you men­tioned it,” or
• “I’m not choos­ing until I know I’m mak­ing the right choice.”

On the oth­er hand, the peo­ple that put in the effort to stay present seem to be… well… alert. Clear. Liv­ing in the moment.

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For exam­ple, in order to have a good rela­tion­ship, I have to have a real sense of who I am and what I am doing, right now, to either make it stronger and screw it up.

And, of course,

I can only have a good relationship 
if I am present with my partner
(Let me note clearly that by “present” I mean “actively in the moment,”
not simply in the same room.)

I can’t have a good rela­tion­ship by think­ing about it or describ­ing it (read grip­ing about it) to others.

The only information that is valuable, the only thing I actually can report on truthfully and thoroughly, is how I am right now.

If I wait an hour and then try to describe it, I’m going to be describ­ing my mem­o­ry of how I cat­a­logued the expe­ri­ence, not the expe­ri­ence itself.

We all know this to be so. 

Think about a dis­agree­ment you had with some­one you care about — a dis­agree­ment in real time, as opposed to “going off and think­ing about it.” By real time, I mean that some­thing hap­pens and you imme­di­ate­ly say, “This is how I see things.” And you part­ner does the same.

What hap­pens is, you dis­cov­er that the two of you have two dif­fer­ent descrip­tions of some­thing that hap­pened right in front of you, sec­onds ago.

And this is immediately after the event.

Wait an hour and your dif­fer­ing sto­ries widen, as you mull things over and give the sto­ry a twist or two, while find­ing ways to blame your part­ner. And your part­ner is doing the same. 

The argu­ment rapid­ly dete­ri­o­rates into “who is right” as opposed to a fruit­ful dis­cus­sion on “who I am, and how I feel, in this moment.”

The best I can ever hope for is to be aware of what I am doing in this moment, be honest enough to describe it, and to recognize that, far from “true,” what I think I see is simply my spin on life as I walk along.

My prin­ci­pal task is to bring myself into con­gru­ence with the present moment, and do my best to stay there. Not, as I just said, from a place of “truth” that I want oth­ers to accept, but rather from a place of know­ing that “this is me, stand­ing here, hav­ing this expe­ri­ence and inter­pret­ing it to myself.” Tricky.

And yet, liv­ing in this moment and the next is the only place I can live. Going into the past or into the future is an imag­in­ing process that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with “real­i­ty” as I am present­ly expe­ri­enc­ing it.

All I know is what I see and hear and feel in the present moment.

Even though I may know that every time, in the past, I had reac­tion “a” to a sim­i­lar set of cir­cum­stances, that’s just habit, not a require­ment. I don’t have to repeat what does­n’t work. And I will be less like­ly to do so if I stay focused on the present moment.

Have a look at where you live. If you don’t know where you are, right now, in your life, with oth­ers, with your­self, stop and have a good look. If you’re stuck plan­ning, and noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, maybe loosen your grip on the planning.

Right now is a good place to live. In fact, it’s the only place. Be where you are!

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