The Art of Staying Present

Image: The flowers in my front yard. Despite the inconveniences of plans made and thwarted, there is still beauty in the world if we choose to notice. Photo: Ruth Adar.

דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט.

Der mentsh trakht un got lakht.

Man plans and God laughs.

This Yiddish saying speaks to all the times we make plans, only to have them collapse in the face of events. I’m meditating on it now as I deal with a new round of body aggravation.

Things had been going so well. After a rough year of pain problems, a new therapy seemed really promising. I got a bit more ambitious about projects. I began getting more exercise.

This past Monday night I noticed I was particularly exhausted in the evening, with a lot of unsteadiness. I didn’t sleep well, and by morning it was clear that a bunch of familiar bio-mechanical problems and pain problems were back with a vengeance. What a drag.

It is so tempting to get caught up in fake moral thinking about these things: What did I “do wrong?” Friends, expressing their concern, say things like, “What did you do?”

What I have learned is that sometimes there is no “what” that I “did.” I can frustrate myself by looking for causality or I can turn my attention to living in the present, paying attention to things as they are. Exercising mindfully and eating mindfully are more challenging when the experience of being in this body is painful or unpleasant. It is an important challenge both for healing and for spiritual well-being.

Judaism pushes us to pay attention to the present moment. Blessings make us stop before we eat to appreciate the food in our hands. Other blessings demand we pay attention to our bodies, to the sun in the sky, to the fragrance of a flower. The day begins not at an abstract time but when the sun rises, and it ends when the sun sets.

Does God really laugh? The Yiddish proverb used to sound cruel to me: “I make plans, and God says, ‘Gotcha!'”

Now I read it a bit differently. I get a little too involved with the future (plans) and God reminds me to stay in the present. It isn’t a cruel laugh; it’s more of a gentle chuckle. I am still learning, still growing, not dead yet!