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.