Slow Down and Appreciate the Now

The 20th century Geman novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, once wrote, "Slowly, step by step, further up the stairs! Truly, the world does not offer such an abundance of pleasures that you should fly over them in jumps." (or something like that - the German to English translator on Google was vague). 

And I guess the implication is, that we need to walk through our lives slowly, "step by step", so that we are able to appreciate each beautiful object or pleasurable experience as we experience it, rather than being so fixated on some mythical future goal that we leap over them in our hurry to get there. 

Which is counter-intuitive for many of us. It is so easy to rush through the to-do list for the day (or the week) frenetically ticking off items as we go, with the idea that then, yes, then, we will be able to slow down, to rest. Only to find that when we finally reach the evening or the weekend, we are too exhausted and wound up to enjoy it properly. 

In the picture above, each blue vase of plants is beautiful in its own right, and each can be appreciated as a singular whole. How much more would we receive from our lives, if we slowed down and truly lived in the present moment? A lot, I suspect.

Meditation practicses are an excellent way of grounding us in the present, particularly following the breath. Because we spend far too much of our lives being "walking, talking heads", unaware of our bodies, oblivious to how they are moving through our days. And so we miss all the lovely moments of now-ness which are in front of us.

There was a fascinating article in The Inquirer some years ago, by Peter Hawkins. He was talking about borders, which he referred to as , "the spaces between places, between roles and between times." His argument was that we all need a breathing space between activities so that we can finish the present task properly before we start on the next. 

He recommended instituting a brief spiritual practice, which he defined as "a ritual to fully finish one event and empty myself before I cross the boundary into the next event." This could be something as simple as taking a couple of deep breaths while focussing on your breathing. I thought this was a really interesting idea, and try to follow it, when I remember.