Friday 2 March 2012

Living into my life....


For me, it was always very difficult to be really present in a moment. Either for the purpose of escaping from reality or out of lack of interest in the activity at hand, my mind would always wander in the imaginary world, while my body was at actual work. From playing piano to washing dishes, it has always been difficult to concentrate on the actual activity that I was doing. I never tried to understand why and how I was never present in the real life that I was living. It became a habit somehow to live as half-ghost half-human always absent minded and never really enjoying the reality of things.
As I understood that most of the human race lives in the same state of half-living and started to discover fashionable books that emphasize the importance of the present moment, the real reason for my lack of concentration became much clearer. My body has become accustomed to do things almost automatically, independent of my mind that was thinking on totally different matters. I could play a sonata, while thinking about my son's runny nose, stopping every now and then, repeating it all over several times and calling that practice. I attributed my failure to play one piece from the beginning till the end without making mistakes to the lack of practice, while this of course did contribute to some extent, the greater blame had to be on the lack of concentration on the actual piece at hand. I could stop dreaming of perfecting my piano skills until one day I suddenly realized that I actually never played! It took so much time to get into the habit of thinking only on the piece I was playing, that I started wondering whether this specific habit of mind-wandering extends to affect all aspects of my daily life.

Every now and then I would catch myself walking without seeing the world around me, cooking without smelling, playing with my kids without enjoying; my life was a living state of constant half-presence. Why? Maybe I got this habit as a kid and my brain became conditioned to it. I don;t know. But what I know for sure is that I would not want to continue to live like that! I guess acknowledging it is the first step, then comes living and loving the every moment of my life! :)

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