Walking thoughts on Presence

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My awesome friend Jennifer M. Maki in her beautiful kindness, gave me the opportunity to explore the subjet of presence for a little while. And I want to start a discussion about something we often seek like a goal to be attained: presence.

Like myths of old, back in the day, presence was just granted in our existence. It was our way of being (as it is thought). We didn’t know any other state. We didn’t have a choice. There weren’t many distractions.

Nowadays? We have separate worlds. Digital world, physical world, the real world... We have even come up with a fake one, too! We have all these compartments of what life is. Professional life, sexual life, married life, single life, adult life, childhood, etc. Everything has become a category.

And you have to be aware that you’re switching between them like you switch channels on TV. “Now I’m activating this mode. Working mode, activated. Responsible husband enabled!”

What does that do? Imagine a big river. You put barriers in it. The flow gets disrupted. The water won’t flow as smoothly, it gets stuck, may dry on the way and never reach its destination. It’s not that precious seamless thing of oneness, going from birth in the mountain to union with the sea.

Now, I may be skeptical of this whole idea that presence has been lost in our age.

I agree it’s an art form and needs to be practiced. But I disagree that it’s something unique to creatures of old. They were also thinking about the past and future. They got excited about a marriage or a war or the beautiful smell of freshly baked bread from the neighbour. They had preoccupations. All these things make your mind ruminate. You’re not grounded.

So being fully present is almost an impossible duty… ALMOST!

Look, I’m not saying presence is impossible. That would be stupid. I’m saying full, total, absolute presence – the kind where you have zero thoughts, zero ruminations, zero anything except the exact moment – that’s probably not real, and if it is, it is not for humans anyway. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be present enough. Present enough to not be completely lost. Present enough to feel the thing you’re doing. Present enough not to miss your daughter’s smile and treasure it deep within your heart. That exists. And that’s worth something. As long as you’re human, you have ruminations, and those won’t stop, but you won’t give up either, will you?

Here’s something I personally struggle with. I used to correlate being present with wasting time. That’s a symptom of our sickness. We associate being fully present with doing nothing and doing nothing with wasting time. But being present doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means being fully immersed in whatever you’re doing. Breathing. Staring. Thinking. Reflecting. That’s experiencing the moment. Modern people call that the flow state. And paradoxically, flow robs you of time—because it makes time light and ethereal—while boredom makes time eternal.

So here’s my summary, in case you’re busy (not present enough to read :’)) but still want to join the discussion.

Presence is being involved in what you truly believe needs to be done at this moment. Distractions have been human for as long as humans have been human. It’s not a modern problem; it has just been amplified by modern society.

Compartmentalization of life.

So stop dividing your life into bite-sized chunks.

It’s just one flow of water from the mountain to the sea.

Stay true to yourself. And allow yourself to be distracted.

You can find beautiful thoughts in your distractions.

Now let me be careful here. There are two kinds of distractions. One is the shallow kind – switching between TV channels in your head, checking your phone while someone talks, jumping from work mode to parent mode to lover mode without landing anywhere, and in completely different times (i.e., lover mode delivering a work presentation... you get me?). That’s the compartmentalization stuff. That kills presence.

But there’s another kind. The deep kind.

Getting lost in a tangent that actually absorbs you, almost fully. Following a thought down a rabbit hole because it’s genuinely interesting. That’s not fragmentation, that’s immersion. It just happens to be immersion in something you didn’t plan. And that? That can be presence enough too. So don’t beat yourself up for getting distracted. Just notice what kind of distractions you are indulging in. Shallow? Gently come back. Deep? Ride it. You might find something beautiful.

What does presence actually feel like? Is it the same as flow? I think they’re different. You can be present in your suffering. Especially suffering is very, very real. Nothing like a pinch to come back from a dream. Suffering keeps you here—raw, unfiltered. That’s hyper presence, in a way. But flow? Flow is like being in a tunnel. You only see the end; there is nothing else going on, and if there were, you can’t see it. You don’t even care about the end goal, it just happens to be the only thing there is. You just go forward. Once you leave, you think, wow, what an experience, what a ride! The whole world was going on around you, but you didn’t notice it. You’ve merged with the action. You’re not present within your own body. You’ve become the verb.

What about meditation, understanding and staying in your body? Do we need to be present within our own body? Sometimes. Just don’t do it too much. You may lose yourself in your body and then there’s no way out. The inside is felt only when it hurts. I got carried away, forgot to mention what PRESENCE actually feels like, but I think you already know it. You’ve been there. Likely in childhood, then you probably got too busy pretending to be an adult… Play more if you can… presence is found in play.

These are just my walking thoughts. I’m no professional. I write from an absolute lack of knowledge. What I think and believe today may change tomorrow depending on how much I ate before bed, how many hours of sleep I got, and how annoyed I’ve been by my neighbor’s barking dog.

So don’t take this as gospel. Live as you see fit. Engage with it, if you will. It’s a worthy intellectual pursuit. Take care. Stay present 🙂