Today I’m thinking about mindfulness, which for those who haven’t indulged in the amount of navel gazing I have, means being conscious of the current moment instead of obsessing about (gestures in the air) all the other stuff.
I remembered a revelation I had about this when I was learning how to drive about (cough, cough) 30 years ago. Growing up in rural Indiana, driving on country roads and through three stoplight towns, one of the scarier things to learn was merging onto the interstate.
Our particular exit felt like it was a half mile long. You turned on, and as a new driver, you had what seemed like 30 seconds to obsess about how you’d merge in. How many semis are there? Is traffic heavy? I spent a lot of time worrying about this.
Eventually, I realized there was no use thinking about it at all until that last few hundred feet. There’s nothing you can do further up the ramp, and it often changed from your predictions anyway.
This is how I think of the current moment. What moment is that, you ask? I feel on the verge of several merging realities. I might lose my job if Medicaid funding is cut significantly. My kids’ education might diminish significantly if the Department of Education goes away. My parents’ and in-laws’ situations might change significantly if Medicare or Social Security changes. All of our health futures seem uncertain with the possibility of bird flu, measles, and polio (!!!) epidemics. Not to even consider climate change.
WHEW!
Anyway, this is all the future. Right now, I’m on the ramp. There’s nothing to merge into, match, or adjust to. I’m not holding still, I’m moving forward, but I’m in this moment.
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