I keep recognizing how difficult it is for me to stay in the now, in the present. I also think I witness the same difficulty in people I brush up against. Even when I am focusing on the now in how I interact with others, it doesn’t go well when someone else isn’t doing the same. No matter which way I go, I seem to repeatedly run into difficulty.
I seem to be involved in a dance that others want to play. I often become aware that they are anticipating the future at the expense of the now. Not staying in the now causes tension and suffering. It isn’t enough that I am present in the now. In fact, that seems to cause tension when someone else is not ready to do the same.
Sometimes when I express all that is right now, it is too much for others. The boldness to be fully present is sometimes too much. The consequences are destabilizing for them and for me. When clarity is important to me, it sometimes runs contrary to someone else’s wishes for ambiguity. So things do not go well.
Robert Bly has told the story of Iron John in which he tells of the boy with the golden hair. For a long time, the boy with the golden hair keeps his head covered lest the shine be too blinding and too revealing. Then the time finally comes when he removes his head covering and only then reveals who he really is. I think there is a lesson here for me.
It is time for me to learn how to be present in the now, but be more reserved in displaying to others just what that means. Being transparently present is my wish and ideal, but I want to add patience when dealing with others.
It is nice to live in the present, and that is a difficult enough task. Added to it is the challenge of seeing the now as perhaps extending into what others might regard as the future.
There may be no past or future in my now, but that is seldom the perspective of most of my companions. However, when we do meet in a common now it is pure joy.