"Time had begun to dissolve into itself, as shapeless as the rain."
-Anthony Horowitz
Time. An organized series of moments, strung together by the way in which we choose to quantify. Notice the clock and wait for the next minute and we've neglected the one already given. Living in the future is just as excruciating as existing in the past. Anxiety ensues. You're either distressed about what you've done or the impending days that lie before you.
It's seemingly obvious, and yet you ask yourself: Why not embrace NOW?
What is it about this present second that is so unbearable and cannot be faced? We are constantly planning, worrying, and anticipating or anguishing, doubting and regretting. Fixated on the unchangeable or the uncertain. Buried in our work, or words or the self-inflicted overload into which we've become falsely secure. Always too consumed, too busy, we are disconnected and unavailable to others because we cannot even be there for ourselves. What gives?
And so we ground ourselves in a practice. For the last year, my time travel has involved two wooden needles. The mindful clicking as they kiss and the luxuriously soft fibers shift from one point to the base of another, and suddenly, I am locked into a current state of being. The tension of my gauge as the fibers catch and I slip another, my mind seaming together a pattern. The task that that leads me on an excursion, tugging my thoughts and anxiety into exactly where I am. And bringing forth the most dire of realizations that this life can offer:
A whispered shriek that awakens the consciousness that this instant, this shortest interval of time, now, is the only place ever worth being.
No comments