I have never been person who clings to the past. I’m not terribly sentimental and I carry  forward neither grudges nor regrets. When I recall the past at all, it is because some small reminder, a photo or a song, conjures up usually happy memories of a person or a place that make me smile. Unfortunately, I have several friends who live perennially in the past, and as we age, they seem to disappear further and further into it. It’s probably no coincidence that Alzheimer’s patients regress in the same way.

     I have lived in the future all my life. My father died when I was just six years old, and so I learned early on that things change suddenly and that nothing is forever.  My “go like hell” race toward the future is an obvious result of this early trauma. My whole life has been about “what’s next”? And, as I’ve grown older and most of my goals have been achieved, I have found it increasingly difficult to settle into the “presence” of my life, especially my retired life.

     And then Covid came along. Funny how things happen. We basically sequestered ourselves for three years, and I found the isolation somehow comforting, and surprisingly creative. It was like a great, long snow day: no responsibilities, no social obligations, no travel, no guests, no plans, no  nothing. An excuse for just being. You couldn’t visualize the future, so you couldn’t live in it. It was all here and now, and for the first time in my life, that seemed to suit me just fine. Finally, all the admonitions to “live in the present,” to “take one day at a time,” to go slowly “step-by-step” and “take time to smell the roses” began to seem possible. 

     We’ve been hearing about “mindfulness” for years now, ever since Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Ph.D. professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts  medical school, founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program in 1979. Originally intended to help treat a variety of conditions in both healthy and unhealthy people, mindfulness practices have now become so commonplace both in healthcare and in popular culture as to border on cliché.  Of course we all need to pay attention, but to everything? Could it be that heightened attention to every event and experience collectively serves to contribute to a national epidemic of anxiety and depression?

     Maybe there’s another way. I’ve been reading and hearing a lot lately about a new movement afoot called “savoring.” While savoring is also a form of present-moment awareness, it is different from mindfulness in that it focuses on the positive and pleasurable rather than on all present-moment experiences. It is a matter of distance vs.intimacy, I think: mindfulness encourages people to observe their own experiences and thoughts in a more detached, objective way, whereas savoring promotes a deepening engagement with experiences that are specifically pleasurable. The theory is that the habit of savoring the moment, however fleeting and even under stressful conditions, can reduce overall anxiety by releasing positive emotion.

     Developing positive emotions during periods of high stress and anxiety in your life is not as simple as it sounds, however, and involves a great deal more than just the self-help advice found in books like The Power of Positive Thinking (Norman Vincent Peale, 1952).  Given the horror and chaos of the world around us today, telling someone to “be positive” is akin to telling a depressed person to “just cheer up.” Meanwhile the politics of fear and threats of violence and retribution that dominate our national discourse do nothing but promote the negative emotions of a primitive “fight-or-flight” response to everyday problems. Not a productive way to build resilience.

     Savoring, on the other hand, prompts us to slow down, be quiet, and consider alternative ways of  handling even difficult situations, perhaps even to find some positive meaning in them. We might, for example, savor the beauty of nature and  the sunrise of each day while stuck in heavy traffic, or we might notice the kindness of a stranger in the supermarket amid a long check-out line. We might savor our home environment through organizing and redecorating, appreciating anew the pleasure and security of our everyday surroundings. We might savor the thrill of anticipation of a future plan or purchase, or even relish a bit of sudden good news that we haven’t yet shared with anyone else. We can savor the meals we cook, the books we read, the memories we have, and above all, the people we love. We can let all the other nonsense go.

     To live in the present, you have to find those sustaining moments in your life and let go of the things that you cannot reliably anticipate or change. January is a good time to try to accomplish this, because January is a “non-month.” It is dark, cold, uneventful, and usually a quiet time, a month of less is more, much like the months of Covid were. Here we can find a respite from the craziness and chaos of the holidays, and if we turn off our cell phones and the incessant noise of the news feed, maybe even find time to think and reflect. And then maybe we can learn to  savor the small things.