Week 113: Gratitude and Mindfulness: Keeping Each Moment Alive

Recently, I had a conversation with a relative of a friend of mine. We were talking about a mutual friend’s home, located out in the country, on an isolated plot of land near a lake. This home represents a haven of beauty and quiet to the person who inhabits it, and who honors, respects, and stands in awe of the natural environment. My friend’s relative commented that he would never want to live in such an isolated setting, no matter how beautiful. His reason was that the view would eventually become common and boring, would no longer be special after living with it for a while, so it wasn’t worth being so far away from a populated area.

His comments got me to thinking about my daily walks through Central Park, and of the gifts of gratitude and mindfulness. Even though I walk by the same trees and lawns each morning, year after year, every day is as new, fresh, and delightful as any that came before. I pondered my response, and my friend’s relative’s idea that his surroundings eventually become boring, and recalled reading (and I can’t remember where at the moment) that the practice of mindfulness tends to keep awareness fresh and alive in the moment. Each moment, even one that is repetitive, is a new and unique experience if we are fully present to it. I know this is something that plays a part in why the park is fresh to me each day, but I suspect that my practice of gratitude is equally important in my ongoing enjoyment. I am so grateful to be able to spend time among the trees, with the birds, and the quiet, that it’s a brand new gift every time I enter this green oasis.

Taking experiences or people for granted causes us to tend to move through or by them without noticing, without engaging, without truly experiencing them. And so, as an experiment for this week, I invite you to explore the benefits of being aware of the present moment as it is, unique and one of a kind, and of your relationship to gratitude in each present moment. Notice how, when you engage each moment as a new one, your senses and experiences come alive. As you do this experiment, you might begin to notice the things you’ve tended to take for granted. Are you aware of the potential loss of richness, texture, and nourishment in your life when experience becomes ho-hum?

As you allow yourself to treat each new moment as unique, one of a kind, and transitory, notice how it feels to really engage your experience, even when it might be unpleasant. That, too, will pass, and it might be interesting to notice what it’s like to have experienced it fully, rather than pushing it away or trying to ignore it. It may be that even awful experiences can be teachers in important ways when we are fully present to them.
As with all the experiments, allow yourself to play with this one. Notice the differences in your internal experience when you actively engage gratitude and when you don’t. Without any judgment, pay attention to what happens when you catch your mind drifting when you’re in the middle of something and what it’s like to bring yourself back to what you’re actually doing, to being mindfully present in the moment, right here, right now.

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