BEING HERE A poem to start this post: Are you like me There’s always something That’s not quite right And needs fixing? Often I am busy And don’t quite notice The ongoing unease Lurking at the edges Let’s get rid of it! Oh I know you’ve tried It’s how we are made Wanting out of the mire Perhaps it’s just life Unfolding for you Let’s embrace like lovers And feel the desire. As the poem above implies, we all experience a certain unease, if not in our personal lives then definitely with the craziness in the world around us. I have written a lot about this in the last several posts having to do with great power relations, artificial intelligence, wars, animal rights and others. To avoid this unpleasantness we sometimes try to escape. But there is no escape from “Being Here”, which is the title of this post. We have no choice , for while we are alive we are always right here, right now. We can’t teleport out of our bodies. This post suggests an approach to handling this dilemma. If you try to be here, you’re likely to drive yourself crazy. You don’t have to try to be here because you are always already here, right now. We experience unease and angst because we are human and have the ability to interpret events and try to figure out a way to improve our situation. Sometimes we’re good at this and sometimes not. But the whole process of desiring something different and better can produce angst. We are not like other animals that, in the words of Walt Whitman, are so “placid and self contained” (see Post No. 26). I suggest the best way of “Being Here” is to just live the life that is presented to one each moment. This sounds easy because it actually can be. The ancient Greeks gave a lot of thought to how to live a life of well-being. I wrote about this in several earlier posts. Their answer was pretty simple: live with virtue. In a nutshell, it is to be wise about what is good and bad, to be moderate, act with kindness and truth, and see misfortune as an opportunity to practice these virtues. I suggest one addition to the Ancient Greek wisdom. My addition recognizes the thing that differentiates us from Walt Whitman’s “placid and self contained” animals - our ability to develop complex interpretations of our surroundings and the unending torrent of thinking that can arise out of this. The additional suggestion is to just pay attention to the always changing moment in front of you. Perhaps we can start each morning as we feel our undies sliding over our butts. 😂 (tighty whities or whatever floats your boat!)