Perfectly Present
I am, at present, reading a book called Time and Despondency, by Nicole Roccas,
and before this I had read Purity of
Heart is to Will One Thing, by Søren Kierkegaard. About both of these I intend to write future commentary. But for now, both have me contemplating
the proper—for Christians—meaning and experience of “being present.” Such clarification recalls me to my latent
ambivalence to this term, which properly warns against the universal modern
sickness of constant distractedness, but which also strikes a dismissive note
toward purpose and meaning. So I thought
I’d sketch, briefly, what
it is to take each moment as it comes, to be fully part of it, then to let it
go and move fully into the next moment.
And that is the domesticated dog. A friend once
observed that every day—every day—when
he came home his dog would light up, happy to see him. He’d then get a dog bone, and his dog would
be so excited. Every time. My daughter’s
dog is just the same, and discriminating.
That dog is doubly excited when she comes home as compared to me—one grade
above chopped liver.
What do these dogs have that I don’t? For example, every day I can have a
delicious, extremely convenient, bowl of cereal with milk. My reaction is completely reversed from the
dog’s: I have no reaction, except the
very grumpy one that comes when either the milk or the cereal run out. Am I not
being present each morning with my tasty breakfast? If I were an animal, perhaps. The distinction lies in the difference
between a human and an animal.
So let me leave this observation open ended. Wouldn’t it be odd if a human person reacted
to each situation with the same level of engagement that an animal does? Treats; threats; shelter; napping; encountering
other animals. Surely such a person
would be somehow deficient? Whatever it
means to be fully present, surely there must be a uniquely human quality to it. I have in mind some human examples, but words
don’t capture what I see. It’s not a dog’s way.
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