It doesn’t have to be/the blue iris, it could be/weeds in a vacant lot, or a few/small stones; just/pay attention, then patch/a few words together and don’t try/to make them elaborate, this isn’t/a contest but the doorway/into thanks, and a silence in which/another voice may speak
This Mary Oliver poem is titled Praying, but she wasn’t religious; she just loved and worshipped nature. For me, the poem is about that terribly elusive thing: the grasping of, and staying in, one’s surroundings and the present moment. It’s about really looking, really listening, allowing what's around us to creep within, past our thoughts, and letting it saturate our souls.
Have you ever gone on a walk, and at the end of it realised that you were thinking about work or something you'd like to post on social media, and missed almost everything that went past?
Being mindful, being in the present moment, isn’t something you just “decide” to do, and then there you are, 100% taking in what’s going on around you. It’s a practice which, if applied regularly, you become better at. It isn’t easy. Recently I elected to try eating my food slowly, to chew it more, taste it better and promote better digestion. I usually start off well on the first few mouthfuls but, inevitably, midway through the meal, I find myself cramming the food in because my attention has wandered.
Many of us, I'm sure, lose focus during conversations. As someone talks to me, I often find my mind drifting off into what I will reply, or even something off-topic, which drives those I care about crazy. Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh said: “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” I’m striving to really listen, and there are mindfulness practices that help. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Mindfulness for Beginners is a practical start. It’s on YouTube in audio format too.
According to the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, humans are born with an overdeveloped consciousness which does not fit into nature's design. Our craving to understand matters such as life, death and meaning is too much for many of us, so we spend our time trying to dull our consciousness to escape the burden of existential reflection. We use defence mechanisms to avoid reflection on our own inevitable deaths. We dismiss disturbing thoughts and feelings from consciousness by anchoring ourselves in values and principles such as religion or the state and other distractions.
We tend to think of our life as endless, our death as something that will never actually happen, and, as Pink Floyd put it, we “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”. When death does announce its imminence (for instance because of a terminal diagnosis) we're unprepared. Almost inevitably, according to author Stephen Levine, people in this situation have regrets, chief among them being not having spent enough time with loved ones or on themselves because they were too busy working.
Realising that you have only a short time on this planet may bring your life into focus; you may experience each moment as miraculous. In Levine’s A Year to Live, one person who discovered they were to die soon said: “As what the doctor said really sank in, I could feel something very heavy begin to lift ... I felt not as though my life was being taken away but as though it had been given back to me. I was going to die and my life was completely my own.”
What's this got to do with mental health? Well, being in the present is one of the greatest antidotes to anxiety. I nearly “fell off the edge” a few years ago when I became so consumed with regret about the past and worry about the future that I became paralysed with indecision. With some help from loved ones, some therapy (and some pills), I came back from the brink.
In contrast to that state, when you are relaxed, breathing normally and “here, now” then you know what to do intuitively, in the present and future, because you’re in touch; you are reading situations, conversations and people accurately. One of the tools I employed was gratitude. When you're living in fear, it's easy for your thoughts and emotions to be all over the place. By focusing on being grateful for what's going well in your life, you begin to feel centred and balanced again.
When you’re really in the moment, gratitude arises spontaneously, as the magic of the world reveals itself. I think that’s what Oliver is talking about in her poem. And what’s the point of a life without magic?
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” - Henry David Thoreau
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