There is a way of being present without confusing with being busy, effort and decision somehow arrive having missed what actually happened,
There is a way of being present that isn’t the same as being busy, but I often form my answer before the other person finishes because I assume I already know their ending,
How many things happened today that I was physically present,but I was already somewhere else in my mind while the present moment was moving through even when there is life right in front of me,
There is a way of being present without confusing with being busy, but sometimes I can’t tell if I’m receiving anything at all or just performing a response to an experience I’m not fully in...
I’ve been the one doing all the noticing without letting myself be noticed, that I forget to let what is happening around me actually touch me and alter the shape of what I’m carrying,
I’ve been the one doing all the noticing without letting myself be noticed, because reaching out requires an openness I’ve been rationing for reasons I haven’t fully faced,
What would unfold differently if I loosened my grip on observing everything and let myself be touched by what approaches from outside my usual guarded posture,
I’ve been the one doing all the noticing without letting myself be noticed, but also smaller than what this life could feel like if I let it...
The world has been acting around me and I’ve watched it, the label is always close enough to be convincing and always slightly wrong in the way that matters most,
The world has been acting around me and I’ve watched it, I wonder if I can hold the catching before the naming begins and the moment becomes a concept instead of an experience,
The world has been acting around me and I’ve watched it, and the most honest and difficult thing is the attention that comes before the deciding, before the story I carry gets to determine what anything is allowed to mean....
I reach for the label before the experience has finished arriving, which is just another way of saying it is true enough to stop me looking closer and not true enough to show me what is actually there,
I reach for the label before the experience has finished arriving, and in the reaching I turn what I feel into what I think about what I feel, which means the feeling is already over before I have fully had it,
If I just sat with one thing today — one conversation, one view, one unexpected feeling — and refused to label it until it had finished showing me everything it was willing to show, what do I think I would find in the space of curiosity,
I reach for the label before the experience has finished arriving, and I am done apologizing for the reaching; but I am also done letting it cost me the open door.
From now on I wait. One breath. One honest moment of not knowing. That is the whole practice. That is the whole life....
Present in the room but absent from the experience,
The observer who never lets the thing reach me,
The world showing more if I stay without demanding,
The label closes the door that was briefly open,
All my vocabulary arriving before the beauty finished...
