How to Just Be
One afternoon, during my recent self-retreat in Sanibel, FL, I sat outside on the deck to read, and I noticed a colorful bug about three inches long, which Google later told me is an Eastern Lubber Grasshopper. I decided to just watch and see what he (or she?) did. He did nothing. Well, every couple of minutes, he would wave one or two of his front legs in the air, but not move from his spot there, affixed vertically to the wooden railing.
I began to wonder about him. What was he doing – digesting a meal, sleeping, wanting to find a mate, sensing into where he could hop next, or was he just … being? What would that be like? I bet he wasn’t fraught about his self-worth, his career, or overcome with planning thoughts, or experiencing waves of joy or shame, but I’ll never know. I decided to get up and do my walking meditation along the deck. Every time I came back to his corner, I peeked at him. Has he moved, gone away? No, he was still in the exact same place. I stayed out there walking, meditating, and checking on him for 45 minutes, and he never budged. Maybe he was meditating? Wasn’t there a 1970s TV show that called an aspiring meditator ‘Grasshopper’?
I struggle to just ‘be’. I am often plagued by restlessness, that feeling of leaning into the next thing. If not leaning, at least planning, which really is leaning. It’s simply not being content to be in the given moment. The irony is, any given moment is the only place life happens. The past is over, and the future doesn’t yet exist. We may have memories and thoughts about the past, but those thoughts live in the present moment.
And what is a thought? It has no form, no substance, no shape or color; it is at most a whisp. A thought lasts a fraction of a second, and then it’s gone, unless we rethink the thought again in a subsequent moment. A thought is so insubstantial, yet so very powerful. We imbue it with meaning, and it drives our experience – our emotions, motivations, further thoughts, and actions.
So, restlessness is that mind state that is averse to just being in this moment, free from judgment. What would it be like to be in this very moment as though it is the only moment we will ever have? How differently we may choose to experience it; I know I’d want to be there for it. And yet this is in fact how it is; this present moment is the only moment we actually have.
This may or may not seem to be a convenient or practical way to live one’s life – just being. Yet, this is what mindfulness practice makes possible for us: we can be so fully present to this moment, recognizing that it is all we’ve got – and do this even while grocery shopping or paying the bills or icing a sore back. What a rich experience life would be if we were actually there for every moment of it and not letting our minds take us elsewhere.
I’m not saying this is easy; it’s not. However, one helpful practice is meditation, where the primary activity is to stay in the present moment, notice when we get distracted by thoughts of the past or future, and simply begin again, gently bringing the mind back to the present experience. Like doing reps at the gym, it gets easier, and we get stronger.
‘Just being’ might look like my lubber grasshopper, or it might look like someone washing a car, trimming a bush, or having a conversation. In other words, ‘being’ is a state of mind. As humans, and not lubber grasshoppers, we are gifted with awareness and a rich array of conscious choices about how we live the moments of our lives. Can we strive to be fully present to each one?
My little grasshopper reminds me that I can – we can.
Have you had experiences when you’ve felt completely present to the moment as it presented itself, without judgment, without clinging to it, or being restless to move on? What was that like?
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