Thursday, December 29, 2011

Magic Time Machine

Christmas always comes and goes a little too fast for me.  It's like a freight train whizzing by me as I stand on the platform, my hair blowing.  The lights and people speed by so fast, I pause for a moment after it passes and wonder what just happened.  I have often wished for a magical time piece that could actually stop time.  Everyone could be frozen but me so I could enjoy a moment a little longer, get more sleep than I have time for or just catch up on a few things that I never seem to get to! 

The closest thing I can get to the freezing time is enjoying a moment.  In one of my groups we called it "meditation."  It freaked me out at first.  I wasn't going to do some weirdo crazy meditation stuff.  I figured out that meditation just meant trying to make my mind still.  Slowing down enough to know where I am and what I'm feeling.  One of the first things I tried this on was eating dinner.  Usually I'm walking around eating or watching tv and eating or eating and reading, paying bills, shuffling through papers, etc.  The goal was to focus on the food I was eating and experience it, sense it, taste it, don't do anything but eat.  It didn't make my food taste any better, but after many exercises like this I learned to be still enough to experience the moment I was in rather than be thinking about the next twenty thousand moments that are coming up. 

I forget about this little exercise a lot, but tonight after work when I immediately jumped into tomorrow's worries, I remembered it and decided to be "in the moment" rather than living in tomorrow before it gets here.  I took the long way home, played some nice music and enjoyed the ride.  I wish the ride was longer, because now that I'm home, I'm having a hard time enjoying anything.  I need to go to bed, and I usually lie awake for a long time thinking about the next day.  Maybe tonight I'll try to focus on just being warm and cozy in my bed because tomorrow's going to be there whether I'm thinking about it or not.

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