There's a habit of mind that's so ordinary that we hardly notice it.
We want to turn each moment into a road.
Toward the next moment.
For example.
We drink our morning coffee while thinking about what we need to do afterwards.
We work toward lunch.
We move through the afternoon toward evening.
We get through Monday to reach Tuesday,
Through the week to reach the weekend,
Through winter.
Waiting for spring.
Even our quiet moments can become real.
Roads.
We meditate so that later we might be calmer.
We rest so that later we might have more energy.
We sit.
In silence,
Hoping that eventually we will become wiser,
More peaceful,
More awake.
There's always somewhere else to arrive.
But perhaps this moment was never meant to take us anywhere.
Perhaps it's not a road.
Perhaps it's simply where we are.
Imagine coming upon a snail moving slowly across a whetstone.
We look at it and immediately see a journey.
It's going from here to there.
It has a destination.
It's crossing the stone.
But perhaps that's just our story about the snail.
For the snail,
There may only be.
.
.
The cool sensation of stone beneath its body.
Damp air.
Movement.
And stillness.
Just this.
Perhaps the snail isn't crossing the stone at all.
Perhaps it's simply being a snail on a stone.
And maybe we can learn something from that.
This moment doesn't have to lead anywhere.
Not even to the next moment.
There may be days that aren't passages to another day.
There may be afternoons that don't need to accomplish anything.
There may even be moments of sadness or uncertainty that don't have to become lessons before we're allowed to live them or to feel them.
We don't have to turn everything into becoming something other than it already is.
For just a little while.
Imagine that there's nothing to do.
Nowhere to get to.
Simply stop traveling through each moment.
On the way to the next.
Instead.
.
.
Notice your body.
Breathing.
It's not breathing in order to become relaxed.
It's just breathing.
Notice whatever sounds are around you.
Instead of listening extra carefully in order to become mindful.
Just listen.
Just here.
Notice the simple fact.
Of being here.
Nothing needs to be added to it.
And nothing needs to happen next.
For this moment to be complete.
Of course,
Another moment will come.
The strange thing is that when it does,
It will not arrive from somewhere in the future,
It will arrive as now.
As this.
And then the next moment will arrive as now.
As this.
We spend so much of our lives imagining that we're traveling through time.
Perhaps.
We never actually leave here.
Oh,
The scenery changes.
The body changes.
People arrive and disappear.
Morning becomes evening.
Years pass.
But still,
It's just this,
Just now,
This breath,
This sound,
This ordinary,
Astonishing immediacy.
Maybe presence isn't something we achieve by holding ourselves perfectly still.
Maybe it's what remains when we stop insisting that now must become something else.
For now,
For this moment.
There's nothing to do.
For the next few breaths,
There's nowhere you need to go.
Nothing you need to accomplish.
Nothing to do.
Not because life has stopped.
But because this moment is already happening all by itself.
You don't have to make this moment more meaningful.
You don't have to preserve it.
You don't even have to be particularly good at being present.
Let the moment be as ordinary as it wants to be.
Rain on a stone.
Like a bird calling somewhere in the trees,
Like a snail.
Carrying its little house.
Across the earth.
And perhaps,
For just this moment,
Don't ask where the road leads.
Maybe there's not a road at all.
Just this,
Only this.
What would it be like?
Without turning each moment.
Into the next row.
