“Every moment think steadily as a man to perform the task at hand with perfect and simple dignity, and with a feeling of affection, freedom, and justice; and to release thyself from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee.”
Excerpt From: Marcus Aurelius. “Meditations.”
Working with dad can be tough sometimes. When things do not go right, he is known to poke at the situation by mockingly saying, “are you having fun!” A few weeks ago, I was working with dad on a pump system. A pipe ranch, big enough to break seized pipes, slipped and fell on my foot. Involuntarily, I threw my foot away from the collision of metal and feeble flesh, striking my ankle bone on the pump truck’s rear, sending a secondary sheering pain, more painful than the initial blow, up my leg, into my lungs, escaping at last through gritted teeth. Less than sympathetically, dad says, “Are you having fun!” Without slightest consideration, I enthusiastically said, “Yes!”
Last Saturday, a neighbors pump stopped working. I jumped in the truck and went up to work on it. He lightheartedly commented, “Isn’t this just the thing you want to be doing on a Saturday morning!” Again without hesitation, I said, “yeah, it is.”
Work used to be a means to an end. I always looked forward to getting home and just doing anything but work. That’s all changed.
A combination of philosophies, Stoicism and Secular Buddism, are reframing my mindset. In both philosophies, present moment awareness and acceptance are at the core of living in accordance with nature. It’s a matter of existence, as we know it that we can neither live in the future nor the past. All we have to work with is this moment in time. Any time spent mentally perusing the future or the past results, at the very least, in a limited awareness and participation in the only thing that is real, the present moment.
Awareness and acceptance open up the doors to living fully and living in accordance with nature. The only thing that nature gives us is this breath. Breath in. Breath out. No matter if I’m working, writing, reading, running, playing tag with my girl, or listening to the detailed plans my wife has made for the day, in those moments, I’m either filled with peace and calm by being fully present, or I’m robbing those moments of my full participation by thinking about anything else.
Marcus Aurelius makes it clear that in every moment, we can perform with excellence by being present. If we give ourselves to thoughts outside of the moment of actions, we experience grief, frustration, and dissatisfaction. He takes it to another level by directing the mind to the inevitable; at some time in life, the very act we are performing will be the very last time that we ever do or say that thing. If this is the last time that I’m going to write a blog post, being fully present, taking in the entire process, appreciating the experience fully, will make this experience feel complete, whole, natural.
Awareness and acceptance aligned my daily activities with nature. To my neighbor, I explained, “yeah, it is. If I didn’t want to be doing this on a Saturday morning, I would be here.” We are fortunate to live in a world where most people can choose what they want to do on a Saturday morning. For those who don’t get to choose, what ever the case, they will always have the ability to choose to be present, to choose the attitudes towards their predicaments, or present moment. Meditate on that for a minute. No one can ever take away our agency to decide how we will respond to any situation. We get to choose our attitudes at every moment.
Be present, and even in the toe smashing moments, you’ll be able to say, I’m having fun, I’m here, I’m present, I’m aware, I accept this moment exactly as it is, if for nothing else but because it is the way it is, and I’m going to living it to the fullest. Who knows, I may never get to experience a wrench falling on my foot again.
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