Category: Being Present

Do you realize that, in an incalculable number of ways, you’re living a life of already answered prayers?

Think about it.

How many times were you terribly sick and prayed for health?

How many times have you feared for your life and saw things through to the other side?

How many times have you prayed for good news and gotten it?

How many times was a deal made where if the universe/higher power delivered “A,” you would offer back, “B”—and the universe delivered?

How many times have you prayed for a person? To heal? To find their way? To like you? And it came true?

…And how many times have we immediately moved on with our lives after an answered prayer… filling the universe only with multiplied additional prayers rather than even an ounce of gratitude?

Maybe one of the reasons we feel like life is unfair, is because for every one answered prayer, we ask for ten additional prayers to be answered… and we quickly forget about all that has already been fulfilled.

…But if you flipped that formula, and responded with 10 times the gratitude for every one answered prayer, maybe life being unfair wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The secret to not having FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is to bring all of your presence into the moment you’re already in.

Lean into courage. Find the curiosity. Fill yourself up with everything already around you. Create and emit the energy you find yourself looking elsewhere for. Get others to jump on board. Become the FOMO others think about—not to make them feel bad, but because that thought will guide you forward towards the time you most want to have. You’re only missing out if your mind is elsewhere of your body. Keep the two together and suddenly, your spirit will start to shine unconditionally bright.

There are moments, oh so brief and fleeting, during everyday happenings, that connect us to the infinite.

It’s right at peak extension of our morning stretch and just as we scratch the precise location of a butt itch.

It’s the moment when the temperature of our shower hits just the right degree and just as we exhale calmly from feeling most refreshed.

It’s that first sip of coffee, brewed exactly to our liking, and the moment our nose catches its aroma as we close our eyes and carefully breathe it in.

It’s our hands cupping warm ceramic in frigid air or the feel of cool water moving mouth to throat to stomach on a sweltering hot day.

It’s that moment during a hug when we’re pulled in tighter or the moment during a kiss when you both decide to lean back in.

Rather than rush through these moments in an effort to get more quickly to the next… What if we lingered there instead?

What if instead of taking these moments for granted because they’re less than .01% of our day… we made them something we appreciated with as close to 100% of our attention while we’re there?

Maybe our days wouldn’t feel like such a blur. Maybe the moments wouldn’t all vanish behind the off putting comment, criticism, or some kind of fear.

Maybe what’s happening in the .01% is really the only thing that ever is happening?

…Maybe it’s just about us being there.

There’s an infinitely small sliver that’s smack in between past and future.

And it’s on the edge of that razor that one of life’s great paradoxes is found… eternity.

Because eternity isn’t really about time times infinity… it’s about bringing infinity into the span of a single moment of time—the vastness of it all, balanced on the smallest of lines.

See you never really touch the past—yet it expands infinitely behind us…

And you never really touch the future—yet it expands infinitely in front of us… both as vast as the universe itself.

…But here? Right on this tiniest of slivers that we stand on in-between these two infinitely expanding timelines?

This is where eternity lies. In the constantly renewing string of nows… again and again and again… the only place where infinitely expanding timelines don’t survive.

The trick is to keep balanced on the sliver. Because slipping into the depths of the past and falling forward into a bed of daydreams of the future is impossible to avoid altogether.

But those who can learn to balance on the sliver more often… get more.

More fully received experiences. More fully present moments. More tastes of eternity…

Every afternoon, between 2-3pm, I:

• Put on noise-cancelling headphones
• Sit quietly into my posture-correcting chair
• Sip on a scorching cup of black coffee
• Read, re-read, think, re-think, stare at blank pages…
• And write

And it’s one of my favorite hours of my day.

Not because of what gets done… but because of how much reward comes from the moments themselves within the hour.

I feel this way about my time spent teaching, practicing martial arts, playing basketball, dancing at music shows, conversing with my favorite people…

These are the things we should be packing our days with—the things we don’t want to end.

I dread the day when I won’t be able to do even one of the above mentioned activities… because this is how I’m most enjoying spending my life’s time.

And today’s reminder is simple: don’t get so caught up in trying to finish, trying to be done, in being “productive”, in being “efficient”, or in getting to whatever is next that you forget to enjoy the reward that comes from doing your favorite things right here in the now.