The Trouble with Living in the Moment

If you have heard, over and over, how important it is to "Live in the Moment" and have employed various techniques and practices to bring you toward that goal, perhaps you've already discovered the basic flaw in that approach to life. I'm only discovering it now.

Living in the now moment can truly suck!

I know all the reasons I don't want to dwell on the past or worry about the future, and they all make sense. I've even embraced the quasi-religious notion that all of creation dwells in the present moment, there is nothing else. The trouble is, it just opens a whole new dimension of anxiety for me to try to Be Here Now.

Like this? Like this moment right now? Or how about this one? Did I miss it? It's gone and I didn't fully experience it. Oh damn. Now I'll never get it back. Ok this one. How's that?

For those of us brought up to look for the right answer, to try to perfect performance, living in the NOW is pretty intolerable. How will I know if I did it right? Can I open my eyes and peek?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not whining. My now moments are, by and large, pretty awesome these days. I wake up when I'm done sleeping. I'm in a great relationship with someone who doesn't want to change me, I'm surrounded by all the comforts of life --- heat, running water, electricity, internet ---- so there's nothing to whine or complain about. It's just this "living in the moment" thing that's got my panties in a wad. That, and the prospect that time is running out.

I get to worrying about whether I'm missing my moments, which pushes me out into the future, which takes me out of the moment, which means I miss some more --- you get the idea. It's HARD to just be. (Okay, that sounded like a whine.)

My mom, now, she's in the moment. All she's got left is the very right now. That's totally what I DO NOT want! I can't know what's going on in her Alzheimer Diseased mind, but it doesn't look like there are very many connections left. She perseverates on whatever is under her fingers, usually her pants leg, which she folds and rolls constantly. She smiles sometimes, and seems to recognize for a brief moment that somebody familiar is in front of her. But much of the time, her eyes are turned inward, as though the physical world around her doesn't exist. Is that "living in the moment?" Actually, I think it's dying in the moment, or at best, existing in the moment.

I overthink everything, because I can. I have always been afraid I would miss my life, and now that my memory sometimes frays around the edges, I'm even more afraid that I'll miss it. I think way too much about people who have gone before, what kinds of experiences they had, what it would have been like to be them. We have so many images available now, that it's easier than ever to recreate in imagination the world as it appeared in times past. Not so easy is replicating the sounds, smells, textures, voices that are gone. 

It must be endemic in the brain of a novelist, or archivist, or historian, or depressive, to even want to bring to life that which is gone, in order to validate the present moment. Or maybe . . . maybe . . . it's past lives. Wooooooooooooo. 

See what happens when I've got too much time on my hands and not enough motivation to clean house?

Just show up and breathe

To say the past couple months have been difficult is like saying congressfolk aren't playing well with others ---- it's a monumental understatement. It is imperative though, that I keep moving forward, even if it is only by inches. 

I've never actually experienced quicksand, but I remember being fascinated by the thought of it when I was a child. One of my favorite books was "Girl of the Limberlost" and another was "Gone Away Lake" --- both featured quicksand as a terrible menace to unsuspecting children who could be lost forever without a trace. It gave rise to more than one nighmare during those elementary school years.

Now, as I do battle yet again with depression, that's one of the images that arises --- being sucked into darkness and never able to escape. Movies and books have taught my impressionable mind that when someone falls into the quicksand or through the ice, the rescuer must lie flat and hold out a strong stick for the kid to grab onto. Somehow, that's supposed to do the trick, though when I think about it, it doesn't seem likely to work very well.

Right now, I've got people holding out sticks and tossing me lines from several directions. I'm so glad they're there, even when I don't believe it will be effective. From my floundering perspective, the sticks look pretty flimsy and it seems more likely that they'll break off or I'll pull others into the muck with me. Terra firma can be elusive from where I am.

The advantage is that I've been through it before and can even get a leg up on it now that I recognize some of the warnings. Depression seems so trite, so tiresome --- so depressing. Everybody and their grandmother has depression these days. You're not going to see any signs up in the grocery store to raise money for poor Aunt Myrtle who suffers from depression and can't work, even though she probably could use the help. Far better to have something rare and exotic that excites sympathy and dread in other people, than to admit to a condition that almost everybody thinks is actually just a cop-out.

And that, perhaps, is what I'm learning this time around. WHAT-HO! It's actually an illness? A disease? It's not me trying to get away with something? It's not a character flaw or just wimping out on life? What a novel idea.

My knee-jerk response to situations I'm unfamiliar with, has always been to "look it up" --- it's not for nothing that my father sold World Book encyclopedias, and we kids used to have "look it up" challenges. But I've avoided learning about depression; that would make it too real. Now, finally, I've undertaken the look it up challenge, and have checked a tome from the library that will either teach me about depression, or crush my facial features when I fall asleep while reading.

There are things I can do to ameliorate this illness. Things I must do. One of them, it seems, is to say it out loud. When I skirt around it and pretend it's not there, it only gets worse and more shameful. There's an inexorable circularity to that, which can be deadly. 

So this is me, letting the sunshine in. From time to time, I snatch up all the rugs in the house and take them outside and shake the dirt out and then let them hang in the air and sunshine, believing that somehow that will make them fresher. I hope it works the same way for depression. 

Scrooge and Marley, I Presume

Today is December 1. It happens every year.

There was a time when I looked upon the winter holidays with excitement and anticipation. That was back when presents really mattered because I didn't have an independent income so I couldn't buy the things I wanted. You know, the early years.

Even the decade or so after my unseemly early marriage, at the tender age of eighteen, there were college and baby and low wage jobs, but Christmas was still pretty magical. It was when I could justify spending a little more than we could afford and figure out a way to make it up later. It was often a time when my parents swooped in from Europe, bearing good cheer, good beer, and interesting gifts.

It wasn't until I was well into the second marriage, and sober, that I started taking responsibility for creating magic myself. I was a late bloomer; for decades I thought Santa Claus was real, and I was still awaiting his arrival. There comes a time, though, when you have to start making your own Christmas or it'll sneak up on about the 24th of December and bite you on the ass. Having little kids around helps.

During my forties, I was so busy creating Christmas Memories for the world at large, that I sometimes had trouble finding the time to be with my own family. When you are in the living history biz, in whatever capacity, the holidays are a busy time of year. People who wouldn't dream of cooking over a fireplace themselves, or hanging out in an unheated log house, will pay good money to watch someone else do it. Nostalgia reigns.

The teaching decade, in my fifties, was interesting when it came to Christmas. I finally had a little something extra leftover at the end of every month --- kids grown, steady work, actual paychecks, an employed spouse, ---- and that took a lot of the fun out of getting presents, but increased the fun of giving them. I also met my match when it came to creating magic. You can hardly imagine what it's like in December, to live with someone who used to own a Christmas store. Really. Have you ever wondered where that merchandise goes when it's not in season?

By the time I retired, at sixty, I was ready to dial it back to cookies baked by someone else, decorations put in place by someone else (thank you, Jill), and dispense with the presents, already. This house is full up, and don't tip off the folks at Hoarders. No, it's not that bad, but it is hard to think of things besides food and underwear that we actually need to shop for.

So here I am in the kitchen, December 1, the first Sunday in Advent, ready for company. As per 55-year family tradition, those of us who are still in an upright position will gather around the Advent Wreath with the well worn volume of "A Christmas Carol" and whoever draws the short straw will read the first stave aloud. We used to do it in the evenings, but now night driving is much more difficult for some of us. We used to gorge on the traditional foods ---- pearl tapioca pudding made from scratch, party mix made from scratch, popcorn, sodas or cider, and whatever cookies anybody had been baking for the holidays. Now, everyone needs to lose the pounds, some don't eat gluten, some avoid dairy, nobody drinks sodas and the coffee is decaf. Temperance applies (except to the pudding!).

Change happens. We four were little kids when our parents devised this amalgam of traditions from each of their families, and applied it to the family they had created. We, in turn, have spread it to our own spouses, children and some to grandchildren as well. Older generations have passed on, crucial people are passionately missed, but this afternoon the candles will be lit, the popcorn popped, the pudding dished up and along about 3:30, as the sun begins to sink lower into the afternoon sky, a shiver will run down my spine as the familiar words are read:

"Marley was dead: to begin with."