A good friend once told me that present was like the air from the mountains: sometimes is so intense that it’s hard to feel it. I’m always keeping in mind what my friend had told me, especially when I’m practicing mindfulness.
Feeling the present with all your senses and noticing all the details, the smells, colours, noises around you, it’s more intense that we can expect to be, like the air from the mountains. When I’m practicing mindfulness I start to feel overwhelmed by all the beauties around me and the small details from what it surrounds me. I can observe it in so many forms, then I tend to switch my attention back to my mind very quickly.
There are so many forms, colours, smells, views that we can enjoy by free and, paradoxically, we ignore all of this and buy more objects instead, focusing on the future, not on the present. If we could be more aware of the present, of all the gifts around us, we would have not craved for things which we don’t own. And start to be happier with the things that are already in our life. Maybe we wouldn’t need anything anymore. Maybe this is what it scares us.
As humans, we have a natural ability to hear, observe, see, taste, feel, a gift which can be overwhelmingly beautiful, especially if we weren’t used with happiness as a primary feeling. And this is one of the reasons why joy can be felt as overwhelming, scary, so intense like the air from the mountains. And it remains only to let yourself to explore more, until you start to be used again with that intensity and stop being frightened of it.
This feeling that we don’t need anything anymore, could be scary. Sometimes it can be felt like death. During our lifetime we are learning that we need to fight, to develop, to grow, to want more and more. And now?How can I be now a person without roles, status, who wants nothing and just enjoy life? Will I change into nothing?Yes, this idea could be very scary for your mind, especially if all your life you fought to survive. And all you need to do is to teach your mind to be free again, to rest and act only when it’s needed the most.
Being mindful helped me to understand the eye of a painter: observe all the details from an object in order to paint it as real as possible. To be happy, you just need to open your eyes and observe, feel. Life is now and it is as it is. Enjoy it.
