You’re Missing More Moments Than You Think
Living distracted and stressed doesn’t just steal your energy, it steals your time without you even noticing.
There is a strange feeling that comes with the end of a week that was otherwise unremarkable. You remember sitting for dinner, you remember the birthday celebration, you remember sitting in the backyard on a Saturday afternoon, but when you try to remember them, all you can think of are impressions. Everything felt like a blur, even when no one made you hurry through any of it. One of the ways people classify these lost moments as being physically present, “but mentally away”. We all do it, and we do it often, roughly 45% of our waking hours are spent somewhere other than in the now.
I would say this is normal, but that would suggest it is healthy, and it is neither.
Why the mind wanders before the body does
A fatigued brain has more difficulty staying in the moment, and our current social climate does not give us much of a break. The constant pressure wears on our nervous systems, making it difficult to relax. To stop and be present, you have to be able to soften, even just a little, to let the moment touch you rather than skimming over it on your way to whatever is next. Stress interferes with this ability to be present, leading the mind to move constantly to the next task or problem to solve.
The other large culprit is the sheer amount of noise that competes for our attention at any given time. A text notification pops up while listening to a friend, a mental grocery list warms up as someone confides in you, or you find yourself planning tomorrow’s schedule while you are supposed to be enjoying the evening walk. There’s nothing remarkable about any of it individually, which is why each can combine to form such a powerful distraction.
The things that seem to slip away tend not to declare themselves as ones worth remembering. We find ourselves wondering where the year went as we look back on an average day that somehow seems to have no particular standout moments.
What it takes, and how it adds up
It may not always be catastrophic, we may not always miss out on grand opportunities, but it takes an emotional toll nonetheless. We may not have noticed as the moment passed, but we are likely to have regretted it afterwards.
We do not lose a chance, we lose the feeling of having had the chance. We see a friend grow older, and find we know almost nothing about them. We see a particular winter pass, and cannot put our finger on why it seemed to last forever. Regret for the missed moments tends to accrue slowly, until they compound upon each other all at once, and suddenly we are looking at a period of our lives that seems almost foreign to us. We were here, but we were also somewhere else entirely.
There is a difference between a memory you can call to mind and one that feels like a part of you. The ones you feel a part of are the ones you were truly present for, regardless of scale.
The attention deficit nobody talks about
FOMO is often discussed in relation to the social media feeds we keep up with. I would argue that the most insidious variety is directed not at others’ lives but our own. We fear the loss of a particular Tuesday morning, or the long dinner where nothing out of the ordinary happened but everybody seemed to leave as better people for having done so. We miss out on the subtle textures of a life well lived, not the flashy moments we know we are likely to capture for later viewing.
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The constant drive to capture those moments and hold on to them is not exactly a flaw. Social media has made us all curators of our own lives, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. What is, however, is the shift in our attention towards what can be preserved rather than what can be savored in the moment. That is not a universal issue, but it is a symptom here.
One interesting finding in the field of mindfulness is that when you actively attempt to be present, time feels as though it stretches. Moments feel longer, fuller, as though they contain more than they objectively should. This is because fragmented attention leads to compressed time perception. The more pieces we hold onto, the faster the whole appears to pass. This is why we feel as if weeks fly by, we were never actually paying attention to them.
How to practice presence
Mindfulness can feel like a lofty practice that demands a lot of us, after all, there is a reason it often takes place on a cushion. But the core of it can be summarized as simply noticing when your mind has wandered, and bringing it back. That is it. Mindfulness can also involve examining why your mind wandered in the first place, but again, that is an optional extra that builds on the core practice. You do not need to build up your concentration to a level that would rival monks in order to be able to notice when your attention has drifted. It is all in getting back to where you were supposed to be that matters most.
The reason most of us get distracted in the first place is that we are not used to paying attention to where we are. Our mental framework is of having to fill our brains with something, and anything, constantly. The idea of just sitting with a moment is foreign and intimidating to some, as if you are somehow wasting your time if you are not putting your full effort into an activity.
Some practical steps can be taken to assist with building the right mindset. Taking long enough breaks from devices to give your attention a rest is one. It does not have to be a massive chunk of time either, twenty minutes at the start of the day or an hour at the end can be enough to start building new habits. Your brain will adapt to the regularity of these pauses, and learn to expect them.
Slowing down certain activities occasionally, and really focusing on them, can help in much the same way. It is not meditation practice, but it is similar in concept and purpose. Making coffee, eating the first few bites of a meal, walking somewhere, anything you do regularly and can pause to consider for a moment can become a helpful ritual. It builds up the same sorts of associations to being present that we are looking for elsewhere.
Finally, writing down thoughts as they come has tremendous benefits for the same reason that mindfulness does. You give the brain a place to put them, and it stops trying to hold onto all of them at once. It is an invaluable aid for anyone struggling with the same issues as mentioned above, but it is most useful as a tool to help us become aware of what we have missed in the first place.
None of this is about achieving an ideal state of presence. It is about closing the gap between when our minds leave and when we return. It is about learning to notice it to do so. The moments you have already missed will always be gone, but you can still be present for the ones you have left.
The moments that are already here
There is one particular variant of the problem that presents itself in the feeling of waiting. We wait for the week to be over so that we can have something worth remembering. We wait for the project to finish so we can finally be somewhere we belong. We wait for the situation to change so that we can be fully present for whatever comes next. The trouble is that these moments tend to be unremarkable in hindsight, we miss them not because they were wasted, but because we allowed ourselves to believe they were not worth having.
We spend the majority of our time on the ordinary, every day things that make up a life. The extraordinary ones are few and far between, but they are no less important for existing. The problem with only practicing presence when we are on the verge of something spectacular is that we are no longer present for the everyday either. We need to build the habit so that it is there for us when we need it most.
There is something almost shameful about the idea of spending a lifetime missing moments. We feel as if we always have, and always will, miss them. We feel as if we are in no position to change it. I say this is not true. You do not have to get something back that you have lost, only take something from the present before you move on to the next.
When you want a subtle but constant reminder to be where you are, Still Mind Club makes items that help you to do exactly that. You can browse the collection here, including our Focus on the Present Moment design intended for those who want to be able to better enjoy their lives.
