Being Present in Faraway Places

It’s a fact of life that we’re expected to ‘front up’ in many places and situations of necessity. Many choices are made for us. We must work/earn a living. We must care for ourselves and our families. We must attend to our minimal civic duties.

Not fronting up is tantamount to regression, yet we know that’s not where life’s truly at. At places and situations we loath the ground we walk upon, we have the capacity to scrounge some joy from elsewhere.

This is what we affectionately call hope.

That is, we derive sustenance from a future event or a present status (probably both simultaneously) within the starkness of the moment bereft of joy; at work, during a sleepless night, or during pain, for good examples.

The ideal state, here, in unsatisfying times, is being present in a faraway place.

The mind holds the present in tension with the preferred reality. It’s an acceptance of the undesirable and unenjoyable by reflecting on other more fulfilling thoughts. It’s the ability to keep coming back to such a thought pattern.

Blissfully Sold More Than Once

Many circumstances in life encourage multitasking of the situation’s consciousness. We get the best out of many moments by being aware of more than one dynamic.

As we interact with another person, for instance, we attempt to hold our personal awareness in tension with the dynamic between us two and the awareness the other person has about themselves that we can observe. Three dynamics are at play.

Being skilful, in a conscious sort of way, is about having an appreciation of those dynamics; to nurture a sense of awareness on more than one plane at a time.

Being sold more than once is the ability to manage several forms of awareness simultaneously. It is not duplicitous. It is not a dilution of our focus. It is super-focus.

In the context of being present in faraway places, such a super-focus will allow us to enjoy a mood of hopefulness when things are otherwise mad, bad, or sad.

A Better Variety Of Present

Where we’re as able to achieve the embodiment of a loaned hope we’re free to be more present in our moments than we would otherwise be if we were encumbered by drudgery.

Because we’re loaning some of our conscious thinking space for cognisance of better things—those we’re looking forward to—we have necessarily learned the art of momentary reflection. For, we cannot be present, certainly within interaction, without being accountable for ourselves. (None of us wants to be found as uncaring or as poor listeners.)

So, as the mind skips momentarily into the future before it is called back into the present, a heightened awareness is a must. Such a heightened awareness requires more mental effort, but it redeems the rich reward of fuller situational stimuli—information with which helps enrich our experience of life.

Being perfectly present is dependent on the mind’s ability to appreciate momentary complexity—utilising the past and the future; reflecting and planning; synthesising every morsel of awareness.

Being present in faraway places is a skill of the awareness to covert hope from one place and bring it to another.

Hope is a product of momentary reflection over what’s good in life. Everyone has such good in their lives. Everyone, therefore, has hope—free and available.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.