You know how sometimes you just feel like you’re forgetting something?
Something is missing and you can’t quite place it?
I began feeling this way in October. It wasn’t a physical thing that I felt was missing. It was a way of thinking.
Something I’d discovered before, but had forgotten.
It was a certain mindset that I knew I really wanted to pay attention to in this moment.
So I opened up this box where I keep notecards of passages from my favorite books. The box is inspired by Ryan Holiday’s “Commonplace Book.”
And sure enough I found what feels to be exactly what I was missing.
It was like the second card I pulled. A quote from Jon Kabab-Zinn (author of the book I gift the most: Wherever You Go, There You Are).
It reads:
You may try acting out of a deep knowing of “This is it.” Does it influence how you choose to proceed or respond? Is it possible for you to contemplate that in a very real way, this may actually be the best season, the best moment of your life? If that was so, what would it mean for you?
It’s a powerful question to sit with.
We have these forward-leaning, future looking tendencies. And as Kevin Kelly discovered when he pretended he had six months to live and wrote about it, having a future is part of our humanity.
It’s part of what makes us human.
But all of the forward-looking comes at a cost.
The cost is forgetting that, like Kabat-Zinn says, in a very real way, this might well be the best season, the best moment of our lives.
It might not be. But for a lot of us, it might actually be.
What would that mean to you if it was? How would you be soaking it all in?
Cameron, this is so well said and so well-timed. I’ve been working hard lately, having come unstuck and feeling the urgency of the clock of mortality, but just this morning I realized I need to slow down and be present. Things flow better when I just lean in to what’s happening and trust that everything will unfold in its own way and its own time. Thank you for reminding me of that!
Hi Amy! So happy to hear this resonated with you and found you at the right time 🙂 I’ve thought of you recently and hoped you’re doing well! It’s like one of the greatest challenges of our time. How to slow down with everything going on… I truly think the only way is to just keep reminding ourselves. Keep pausing. Taking our moments and actually being here for them. Even if only a few times per day, it’s something!