Being Still
I have recently been forced to surrender three days of my life to illness. What a waste of time! Or is it? Certainly, during the actually event of being violently sick and feeling too wasted to fight the inevitable inertia, it feels like a complete waste of time. However, in the aftermath of recuperation, I find myself experiencing a sense of renewal and relief. The deepest sensation though is gratitude. Gratitude that I have made it through to the other side of such a debilitating illness. Gratitude for the good health that is my normal status quo. And, interestingly, gratitude for being forced to take time to step off the everyday treadmill of routine and have a reason to be still and merely sit here with my dog.
I wonder how many of us are forced into this state of stillness by being unwell. There are certainly many people with busier schedules than mine, yet I know I am sometimes guilty of being swept out by time’s tide, losing sight of the shoreline of my intent. The days can be filled with goals and tasks but I can find myself at the end of them wondering where the time has gone. I believe it is because, at these times, I have forgotten to live in the moment consciously.
Living in the moment is beneficial for the soul on many levels. As a Christian, God only lives in the moment so, if I desire to feel close to Him, it is imperative that I am in the same place. For a non-Christian, living in the moment is still the best place to be because it is here we can be free from worry, anxiety and regret. Ageing, unfortunately, can cause many people these negative emotions so living in the present can offer an effective solution.
‘Mindfulness’ appears to be a catchword in our society, yet I believe it is another way to describe being attentive to both our physical and emotional surroundings. In other words, our focus is on the present moment. In their research paper, Gratitude as a Psychotherapeutic Intervention, Doctors Emmons and Stern state: “One of the first steps in gratitude practice is attention.” If we wish to apply this to ageing, this proves that bringing our attention to what we are experiencing now, means we cannot be harbouring concerns about ageing at the same time. In his book Thanks!, Dr Emmons confirms this notion by stating: “Our brains are used to prevent the emotional confusion that would result from the simultaneous activities of opposite emotional states.”
Therefore, we simply cannot be anxious about ageing at the same time as feeling grateful and joyous. It is a choice for us to make at any moment: To focus on ageing or To focus on living
By connecting to the present moment, we are connecting to life. Gratitude offers this connection and this is a powerful choice for us to make.
Unfortunately, too often it takes sickness to force us to recognize the frenzied activities of our thought patterns that may have become our normal way of living. When we suddenly find ourselves incapacitated through illness or injury, we are placed into a different frame of mind that forces us to re-evaluate these patterns. It is no coincidence that many people find themselves unwell after a particularly stressful time or that they go away on holiday, to spend the first few days nursing a cold or something similar, as their psyche unwinds and relaxes.
Choosing to focus on gratefulness is to choose a way of living that empowers us to live well. Next time you find your thoughts beginning to run out of control, consciously halt those thoughts and look at the magnificence of the sky. Really look at it… the colour it is today… the rain or the rainbow… the sun… the clouds. Feel into it. Allow yourself to experience the wonder of the moment. As you do so, there will be an expansion of your heart as gratitude moves in. Brother David Steindl-Rast calls it ‘surprise’. By responding to the beauty around us with a childlike surprise, he explains in his book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, that our ‘inner eyes’ are opened to the fact that everything is in fact a gift and instantly our hearts feel grateful. This changes our thought patterns immediately and brings us into the present moment.
In relation to ageing gratefully, this means our attention is no longer on ageing but on living fully and expansively.