But Again, Doesn’t It All Count?

The sound of the dishwasher, mundane as it is, is giving rhythm to the city this morning. The incense smoke dances in the sun's rays as they start to pour through the window. The smell of oud lingers in the air, a sensory delight that only exists when you pay attention. This could all be missed, seen as insignificant, as if life only exists in the important moments.

Who decides importance, really?

I recently realized a block I had with writing was the belief that if it wasn't “important”, it was a waste.

A waste of what?

Allowing my brain to weave together the marvel of the mundane? That's a waste?

May every daily delight call my name to presence, because it is in these moments we rush past that hold the most treasure, joy in simply being, seeing, breathing.

The dishwasher now drains as the light is in its full shine, and I start my day with my clients. To be present with them is as natural as blinking as they share their trauma, grief, shame, growth, wins, updates, lives, because being present in your in between builds your capacity for presence when it counts.

But again, doesn't it all count?

The thing about presence is, I think we've all misunderstood it. We tend to assume it means calm, happy, collected, regulated all the time, but that's not the true experience of presence.

What I described above is a mundane moment where, yes, I was feeling peace, but suppose I was telling you about another recent experience where I was feeling anxious because I had so much on my calendar I didn't know if I was going to fit it all in. I was feeling my heartbeat. I was feeling that aliveness of, whoa, I took on a lot, and I was waiting for my brain to catch up with the "I want to be booked and blessed."

Instead of trying to escape the overwhelm and convince myself I shouldn't feel that, I say, it's okay, let's sit in this. Take a breath. You've been overwhelmed before. You don't have to collapse in this. What do you need? Maybe you need a different system. Maybe you need different organization. Had I quickly removed myself from that overwhelmed situation, I wouldn't have the organization that is developing from it.

Every experience of presence is teaching you, growing you, expanding you.

Presence is learning to stay in the uncertainty. Presence is learning to stay in the grief. Presence is learning to allow joy because people collapse under joy just as much as they do grief. It's staying for the good and the bad.

Presence is sitting with a friend who is hurting and not rushing them out of their pain, and it's sitting with yourself the same way. Just as it's noticing the birds, the trees, the beauty, and the sunlight, it's feeling what's happening in your body and how you feel around certain people and that aliveness or exhaustion you feel when you do certain things. It's learning to understand the cues and the symbols and the signals, and all of this comes from being present in the mundane so that you can be present for all of it.

I always say that when you pay attention to life, life pays attention to you.

The other day I was on a bike ride telling a friend how much I wanted to see an owl or a hawk, and I was saying that birds of prey don't always make themselves obvious when you're looking for them. They tend to reveal themselves. The moment I finished that sentence, boom, I saw a hawk. When you start paying attention and being present, life becomes harder to miss.

When you notice the beauty and the blessings and the pain and the trauma, that's how the fullness of life comes to enrich you.

What would you notice if you spent less time trying to escape your present moment? What would you notice if you stopped trying to fill every moment with some curated experience and simply found the magic in the mundane? How much is ready for you to pay attention to and notice just outside your doorstep? How much awe and wonder is in the way the sunlight changes from day to day?

We spend so much time trying to get rid of feelings, outrun feelings, explain feelings. What if presence is the trick to learning to stay in them? It's that refusal to abandon yourself and be present for whatever is coming up in the room that day, whatever experience you're bringing, and trusting yourself enough to feel it and hold it.

Presence grows with your capacity, and capacity grows with your presence. Presence grows with your confidence, and confidence grows with your presence.

Maybe that's the real invitation of presence, just to stop missing your life while you're living it.