With all the virtual graduation ceremonies happening lately, I remembered this piece I wrote two years ago when my youngest finished college. While it could be argued that we’re always in transition (each day is one rotation as we transit around the sun), with the pandemic right now there is a great deal of concern about how best to transition back into more social interaction. Note that it’s how not whether to begin moving from one phase into the next. How we relate to the constant transitions we experience makes all the difference, and the space between one activity, place, or time is a powerful invitation to awaken just a bit more.
Are We There Yet? originally published in Moving Into Mindfulness on May 23, 2018
My daughter just graduated from Hampshire College (squee! so proud!), and as always I was struck by the word "commencement." As Streisand says in The Way We Were, "that's a funny word for the end." Of course, commencement ceremonies are called that because the graduates are about to begin the next chapter of their lives. So although it marks the end of an era, it is also just the beginning.
Another word for this is transition. I love transitions because within them we can see our habits of mind and body so clearly. I often encourage my Alexander students to bring full attention to transitional activities, such as walking through a doorway, up or down stairs, moving from car to walking or the other way around. It can be a challenge to practice body-mind unity during an activity, especially at first, but it's pretty easy to shine the light of awareness between actions. The trick is to remember to be mindful of these moments.
Doing this can bring about deep and dynamic change. Why? Because it's the last place we show up. We are always thinking ahead, moving toward something, or away from something. Who brings intention to reaching for the door handle and opening the door? The point, we think, is to get to the other side of the door. So when we intend to be present during transitional moments, we transform habitual "endgaining," as F.M. Alexander termed it, and are awake for the means by which we are acting. When we recognize the “how” of what we are doing, our embodied presence becomes the focus of attention, and the strain of trying to attain a goal drops away.
Mindfulness, whether in formal meditation practice or otherwise, shows us how addicted we are to the future. Anyone who meditates sees right away that the mind likes to plan, organize, and control what it anticipates will be coming. This tendency has a helpful adaptive quality, and our ability to scan the horizon for future encounters is part of our evolutionary heritage. But when this is the only way we operate, we suffer. It is deeply unsatisfying to be constantly looking ahead for happiness, hoping that what we really want can be obtained "someday." This hamster wheel of desire (samsara in Buddhist parlance) keeps us chasing dreams and fantasies, all while missing what is happening in the here and now.
You already know this. You can probably think of an example from your life right now. It's like the little kids in the back seat of a family car trip, asking "are we there yet?" It's like me, obsessively checking my peony plants to see if the blooms are out yet. I caught myself doing this yesterday, staring at them, being kind of critical about how long it was going to take until they opened up. As if their only value is the flowers they produce. Expectations tend to take over in the mind and, left unnoticed, become fixed and the next you know you’re believing them as though they were real.
Yet this is how we are, how we so often relate to our experience of life. And this is why mindful guidance repeatedly reminds us, "there is nothing to do, nowhere to get to, nothing to become." That is absolutely true, if you are in the moment. Yes, the peonies will bloom, but what is even more true is that, in this moment, they are blooming. They are as perfect now as they will be when the blooms are fuller and more fragrant. When I notice that I want them to be in a different state than they are, I can learn everything I need to know about the ways I create and increase my own suffering. Is "suffering" too strong a word for such a small dissatisfaction? Maybe, but multiply that by the hundreds of times a day when I want things to be other than they are, and that adds up to an unhappy state.
Being there during transitions helps with this. Try choosing to bring present moment awareness to something you do every day, like the transition from finishing a meal and getting on with the next thing, or the moments between reading an email and replying to it. Keep it simple, without analysis or expectation. Can you be there, not chasing the next thing but really in transition? When you can, you will discover the truth that everything is flowing, changing, and dynamically balancing.
Are we there yet? Nope, and we never will be. We are here, now. That's all, and that is enough.