Presence

There is a great value in holding a space. Being

i-n
t-h-i-s
m-o-m-e-n-t.

Presence.

This is one of my (many) challenges in this life. I vascilate between rising to it and running from it. I suppose it's like a dance--find the poetry and the art in everything, right? I wouldn't be me if I didn't.

Instant gratification society puts a bit of a kink in the spiral, as it were.

But anyway, I do find myself moving toward it far more than I move away from it now, so that's good. ("Good" is such a ridiculous word.) We crawl before we walk before we run, and everyone falls the first time, and insert platitudes here. But I do suppose that there is some kind of truth in the clichés or they wouldn't have become clichéd; people said them all the time because they made some kind of sense. We like things that make sense, after all. Boxes, neat little boxes, all lined up in a row, the illusion of some kind of external stability.

"To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." (That's E E Cummings.)

But see, clichéd to the nth degree, to the point of absurdity in some ways. And romantic and poetic and not even remotely real. Almost some kind of post-modern existentialist philosophy. Yet, stripped of the words there is some kind of truth in there. Some kind of glimmer of something that on some kind of level makes sense.

I often get into these wars with myself. Wars of attrition, you see, last man standing kinds of wars. You see the paradox there, but I seem to remain on some level attached to these catch 22s. I'll venture a guess as to say it's fun. Mind games with myself because I'm the only one I'll consider a worthy opponent. Juvenile and arbitrary, really, but fun nonetheless.

Right, this post had a point, did it not?

Presence.

Well, read this:

"When you’re obsessed with what’s going to happen next, you’re stuck in reaction mode. The terms of your experience are being dictated. You’re trying to control the future by tensing up in the present, and this knocks you out of authenticity.

When you stay centered in the present, you trust that your natural response will be just what you need. You remain authentic, allowing your creative self-expression to emerge without forcing it." (That's Steve Pavlina.)

He says it better than I could anyway. Straightfoward and direct, whereas I tend to like to muddle things up...they look prettier that way.

And that says a lot, there. Doesn't it?