On Being, Mindfully

Where do I begin?  My damp hands hinder my writing speed. My eyes ache at its proximity to the white and gray, and my body, anxious.

I struggle to find the words and they act as though they are intentionally hiding from me for abandoning them. I suppose twenty-seven months is a cruel stretch to abandon the craft.

Do I say to them, ‘forgive me, come back.’ Do I crawl after the traces left behind? Do I dig past trauma to lure it? I fear I may be lured, once again, into etching into my soul. But there is no escaping. I run from it and it haunts me. I come back to it and it eludes me. What a terribly, beautiful paradoxical life we live...

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Morning arrives without ceremony. A soft light leaks through the curtains, carrying the quiet hum of a world just waking. The call to prayer ends and the birds chirp as they start their day. It is in these in-between moments that I remember to simply be.

For much of life we are trained to measure ourselves by movement; by the next task, the next proof that we are useful, and in our era, the next post. But there is a different kind of living that begins when you stop reaching for the next thing and tune into to what is already here.

In being mindful of life, I’ve found that it is like an intentional returning to oneself - something like the way the sea keeps its own rhythm no matter how hurried the world is.

Some days this practice is a notebook and a pen. Sometimes it is the discipline of putting my phone facedown and listening to the person I am with. And although I do not like this much myself, other days it is a quiet solo walk. Each small choice becomes a way of saying: my life is not a race.

However, the deeper the stillness, the more everything else seems to move. When I loosen my grip on time, I suddenly feel its pulse more vividly. When I stop reaching for meaning, it finds me in ordinary moments. Moments as simple as my niece beating my back and running in laughter, as ordinary as turning pages of a book.

I still rush and scroll through. Our world is wired that way. My generation does not know a time where we were not using digital devices and I am afraid that while it may be our privilege, it may also be our doom.

To be mindful is to be anchored in the present while open to the shifting world. You may learn a thing or two, perhaps that nothing stays, and in that fleetingness you find a strange permanence, something like a belonging that needs no certainty.

Being human itself doesn’t ask us to have a perfect life or constantly fixing what’s broken. It invites us to meet life as it is - tender, unfinished - and in doing so, we discover that the very act of living is itself a form of service and love.