UBBT: Talking to myself, I am

“All his life he looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.” Yoda (2:25 on the youtube video)

We talk about being in the moment a lot. “where am I, what am I doing?” These two questions are constantly being put to us in class. It’s a concept I only understand on the superficial level right now. It’s easy to get so fascinated by something and so caught up in it that you are focused, passionate and fully immersed in it… sometimes. It happens to everyone sometimes. The piece that I am trying to figure out is how to be in the moment and fully immersed when I want to be. Part of my nature is being able to get swept away for a short time by something shiny and focus on nothing but that one thing until the next shiny thing comes along. That’s easy. But it’s only a small part of what I think “being in the moment” is. The real trick is to not let that other shiny thing steal my attention.

So I know what it means to be “in the moment”. Theoretically, it’s pretty simple. It’s just putting aside all of the shiny junk—like what I’m having for dinner, my annoying boss, that cute girl in my class—and keeping the moment pure by remembering where I am and what I am doing, be it on the mats in a horse-stance throwing a simple punch and making each punch another significant step towards a perfect punch, or at a table with my books open and pouring over my notes and textbooks to give me the knowledge to be a well rounded teacher. But even though I know what it is, I still don’t understand it.

A thought just came to mind: What about “Why am I doing this?” where does that fit in to The Moment? It’s obviously important, no question of that. But is that a thought that I should sideline while I’m doing something? To go back to Yoda for a second, “All his life he looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.” The part I like here is that he doesn’t say to be in The Moment all of the time. To never look to the future, to never cast your eyes to the horizon would just leave you entirely focused on nothing in particular.. Having no thought past where I am and what I’m doing would be disastrous. There is no way to know my intent without thinking of the future, of Why I’m doing this. Without looking ahead there is nothing to drive me forward, but if I only look ahead, how can I get anything done now? All things in moderation.

Being in The Moment is about Doing something. It’s not about Thinking about something. They’re both important, and both very different. Did I answer my own question?