I was walking the familiar path towards my office, a path I
take every day on my way to work, when I noticed these fuchsia flowers sticking
quite conspicuously out of an office building. Surprised I didn’t notice them before
in the past, and also because I’m a flower person, I commented about them to my
friend who was with me at that time. He simply said it was because I was “being
in the present”. And that struck a poignant chord within me because of how many
times I’ve trod on the same path looking downwards or rushing to get to a
certain place or just too occupied to just BE in the present moment.
I’m a person who thrives on making plans. Planning helps me
to stay calm when I organize the clutter in my mind and sort them into
manageable chunks. It also gets me super excited especially when I’m planning
my next vacation, outing, you name it. It gives me something to look forward to
as I go through my mundane day-to-day schedule. But the problem with planning
and anticipating something that is yet to happen is this: that I am so caught
up in the ‘what could happen’ that I forget to just enjoy the current moment.
So much so that when I’m actually in highly awaited moment, I’m just grazing
the surface while my mind is furiously churning out ideas on what to do next. On
the outside, I’m living the life floating in the clear turquoise waters of the
Andaman Sea, but in actuality, I’m thinking of catchy Instagram captions or
Googling places to have drinks later. I’m afraid I’ll actually forget how to
revel in a moment, how to just… be.
Sometimes I really wonder why I rush so much. It’s not like
I have to urgently be somewhere all the time. Why do I always feel so kancheong inside? Maybe if I learnt how
to slow down and look around more, I would feel that my humdrum workaday life
had more colour to it. That I didn’t have to look to seasonal activities to
keep me motivated. Because right now is exactly the place that I want to be in.
So, how does one start to just be present?
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| It looks so tranquil, a lone boat on a river, but there were heaps of tourists all around, just not captured in this frame |
