Now

Sitting in Steve's backyard garden yesterday, I remarked that seeing flowers makes us happy, perhaps because we love to see things grow, that they draw our attention to the fact that we are part of nature or simply for their pure aesthetics. Steve's comment ~ that they bring us into the now, is closer to the truth. My attitude to life was vastly changed about eighteen months ago when I read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and I attempt every day to be in the moment. The fact that I reflect on my day through this blog is not as counter-productive as you may think, indeed, being in the now, allows for a recognition of past life events without dwelling on them. It's over-thinking and analysing that gets us caught up in 'might have been or should have been' thinking that encourages judgmental attitudes towards ourselves and others. Sure, past events have made us who we are, but to live in the space of past events is often a paralysing thing that stops us from moving forward. I can't say that I am fully successful at undertaking this 'being in the now' attitude, I, as others, often lapse; however, as I write this blog I hear birds singing and soft distant sounds - a door closing, a car moving down the street. There is an exercise I do when I first start working with a student. I ask them to close their eyes for a few minutes and then when they open them, to write down on a piece of paper what they've heard. The exercise is two fold, it gives them the opportunity to listen, so useful when attending lectures, but it also allows them space to stop thinking for a while and concentrate on something other than what they see around them. We are such a visual society, we forget sometimes just to go inward and take in the complex sounds that pervade our lives. There is rarely complete silence, except in space, where at least according to the tag line of Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) ~ no one can hear you scream.