Making Friends With Now

“Since there’s no escape from the Now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it?”

-- Eckhart Tolle, "Stillness Speaks"

Hmmmm. Welcome this moment, and become friendly with it.

But what if this particular ‘Now’ is hard. Painfully hard. How can becoming friendly with it even be possible - let alone a good idea?

Ever since my first mindfulness (MBSR*) class, I’ve been grateful for the invitation to consider this: That the only moment we ever have to experience joy, peace, love… is this one. The one that’s here right now. No exceptions.

So, why does that matter? No question, life always has brought large and small challenges, problems to solve, and uncertainty about the future. In fact, these are among the stressors that brought me to my first mindfulness class.

But one day while trying to practice mindfulness, in the midst of facing my own mountain of troubles, my attention (accidentally) moved for a second to the Japanese maple tree outside my window. In an instant, the fluttering of its autumn-red leaves against the sky dissolved my mountain of worry. There I was, peaceful and awestruck, noticing a tree, in this moment.

The worries weren’t gone for good. But in that moment, neither were they blinding me to the love I felt for this tree, with her swaying branches and the deep comfort of her beauty, and her presence.

So there they both were, like different channels you could flip to on the television set: The conditions in my life which sometimes felt suffocatingly scary and difficult, and on the other channel, this grateful surrender that felt like love, or grace. Honestly, it seemed both impossible and undeniable that they could somehow coexist.

In hindsight, I see that I could only have felt the awe of that moment by welcoming, right then, this tree, as the quiet friend she’d always been for me, and by letting myself be present with her. I let her stay with me for a few extra moments, slowly taking in the reality that actually, unlike the thoughts and worries that had flipped off the lights and obscured the present moment for me, the tree and her humble beauty were right outside waiting quietly and patiently for my return.

Mindfulness turned out to be a great teacher for me, and like a lot of great teachers, not always easy. Training the attention - a foundational, ongoing practice of mindfulness - quickly exposes the degree to which the mind darts about its vast catalog of memories and predictions, sabotaging our best efforts to remain still and attentive to a chosen object, like the breath— or stillness itself.

But with practice, the art of being present and receptive to one’s own life, and the (as it turns out) boundless reality that’s actually here, can be honed.

Welcoming the present moment as a friend, as with any friend, doesn’t guarantee an uninterrupted flow of calm and joy that ignores or erases the many challenges of our current world.

What mindful presence may reveal, however, are one’s own capacities to notice what’s here, what matters, what’s loved, and what’s possible in any moment.

Interested in trying a short mindfulness practice? Click here to check out the guided meditations available on our website.

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*MBSR: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and 8-week Intro to Mindfulness workshop