I Want To Be Present

At times I  feel I am on a treadmill of sorts, emotionally speaking. There is this desire that arises where I want to feel the contentment and satisfaction of a day well spent, where I wish to get all I can from an activity and feel a real enrichment from it. The great paradox in this being that the more I desire such, the less I am able to achieve it. With that desire is an expectation that actively keeps me from embracing the activity and present moment for all that it is worth. Instead of engaging in all that can be engaged with I am constantly waiting and looking for the moment where it will all align and I can become full immersed and enveloped in the full nature of the activity. With every moment where I haven't become entranced is another moment I worry about time wasted. "I only have this small time to enjoy this, why can't I enjoy it" Every thought and worry another reason I can't begin to enjoy that small time I define as the only time.

I trap myself with these things. When you delve into self help literature and videos the problems and solutions are for the undisciplined. How to start cleaning up your messes, planning your day, taking care of your body, eating right, making your goals more concise and precise. These are all essential and helpful. These all sell, because these are the things people typically have trouble with, but what of the person who is disciplined? What of the man with his shit together but just can't find that solid contentment and enrichment that makes a life a life well lived. That's the predicament I find myself in oftentimes. After attending to all I I need to attend to, I long for leisure but I won't let myself enjoy that recreation. And that inability to enjoy my time outside of my tasks will then funnel back into me not being able to perform those tasks as well as I believe I ought to. Bringing me to the beginning where I have to get my discipline back in order before even considering enjoying any free time once again, just to be brought back to the same predicament of not being able to get what I need out of that free time and the cycle starts anew.

This is why I call it a treadmill. I am running repeatedly along the same cycle over and over. There is a slight irony to it all however. The solution is simple. The solution is to stop overthinking. You need to be present. I need to be present. Its deceptive in its simplicity however. Because the next question is how do you be present? A question that is seemingly impossible to answer. A question that is the foundation of the whole Buddhist religion. A question that is answered without words and experienced in full entirely internally. I think I find my beginnings in being present by grounding myself. Asking myself questions, opening my soul. Asking why my body feels a certain way. I go for the physiology, because I know I have learned to hide away and ignore my emotions, and that's how my body manifests those emotions even if I am not aware of it. "I am not relaxed. There is a tension in my stomach and my legs. My head has the smallest niggling of a headache and no matter the comfort of my seating I cannot help but slouch." I ask myself why I would be feeling that way physically. "Is it uncertainty? Stress? Worry?  Are those the emotions my body is hiding from me? What could be the reason I am feeling those emotions? What may be the cause of those feelings? Should it be affecting me in the ways it is currently?" I am opening up a dialogue with myself and allowing a decompression to transpire. I am letting my feel. It is when I let myself acknowledge the very things my body is not letting me feel that I can feel. This subconscious coping mechanism is more than a nullification of negative emotions, its a nullification of all emotion. So when I open those emotions up, feel them, and then let them pass, it in turn lets me feel positive ones as well. The emotional undercurrent of my recreational time can finally sweep me up and lose me in its luster. I can feel it. Becoming present in that moment is to feel that moment and all its offerings. The feelings of the activity become the feelings I am experiencing. An experience I can finally have because I let myself feel again after hiding away that capacity for empathy.