I’ve been thinking, not about one thing in particular, but about too much really. I don’t like feeling so scatterbrained; it stresses me out a bit. I think about school and my friends, my family, what I’m doing this summer, or something random, like about something I read years ago.
For instance, this morning I was thinking a lot about some of Sylvia Plath’s writing that I reread recently. And then I stopped and thought, hold on – would anyone who knows me understand why I like Plath so much? I feel like some people would be concerned about my mental health. She’s just so dark, but that’s not the main reason I like her. Plath’s writing is so deliciously raw and irreverent. Let’s be honest, we all have irreverent thoughts, but this woman wasn’t afraid to put it out there. She was just so herself, even though she didn’t feel like she understood what that meant.
I was particularly thinking about a quote from her book The Bell Jar, which I read and loved in high school because at that age everyone is feeling particularly angsty, misunderstood, and a bit disillusioned. The Bell Jar hit the spot. Anyway, she says,
“At this rate, I’d be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I’d never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?”
And sometimes, that is exactly how I feel. I simply assume that I have experienced nothing quite so interesting as everyone else, but I think deep down we all feel that our own lives are so small compared to other people’s lives. There is always some one out there who is accomplishing more, seeing more, living more. It’s overwhelming to think about – it makes you think about your own past and future and how on earth can you possibly try to live life as well as everyone else seems to be living it… Which brings me to something my yoga instructor said a few days ago. We’ll call her S, because that’s the first letter of her yoga/spiritual name (not that I know anything about spiritual yoga names).
S had the whole class sit in a comfortable position with our legs crossed. The lights were dim and the room was quiet. I was freaking out a little about some economics homework that I didn’t think I had done properly, so my mind was wandering (“What the hell is a reservation price? And why can’t I just understand marginal utility/benefit already?”). S spoke in her calm, soothing voice and asked us to notice the shirt she was wearing. It was a plain black long sleeve shirt, with plain white block-lettering on the front. The words read “Be Present.” S then said something to the effect of living in the moment (my mind was still a little scattered), and then she asked us to turn our heads to the left, at which point I started to pay attention. To the left, she explained, lay our past – five years ago, 8 months ago, 10 minutes ago – everything we had experienced up until that point resided to the left of our bodies. She asked us to breathe deeply and then blow away the past. S then told us to look to our right – there lay our future, all our hopes and dreams, all our looming responsibilities or adventures – and she asked us to breathe deeply and blow the future away. Then S asked us to look straight ahead of us – this was our present, the very moment we were currently living. S asked us to be present in that moment, and it struck me that it was one of the most valuable pieces of advice I had ever received. I didn’t need to be thinking or worrying about anything at all – I just needed to enjoy that moment, listen to the sound of my breathing, and appreciate being human and alive and feeling free.
When I worry about not living fully
(or not having enough to say because I haven’t experienced very much),
it takes away from the moment I’m living in.
Each moment is experience enough.
If you are present in the experience and feelings of that moment, then you really are living enough.
I’ll end this with one last Plath quote,
because Sylvia just says everything so well:
“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”
– Les
leslieannramey.com 