When the Moment Comes

Think what you missed while you were doing what you were supposed to do.

I often think of the moment when I first let go of the side of the pool. It wasn’t when my brother (who was teaching me to swim) told me to. It wasn’t when I screwed up my courage and decided to. In a sense, it let go of me. Suddenly I was floating, and ecstatic — but the feeling wasn’t one of triumph, because I hadn’t really “done” anything — certainly not made a decision. I just, as they say, “found myself” free-floating in the water.
On many other occasions I’ve “found myself” doing something that involved a kind of consent or courage or acquiescence that had nothing to do with my conscious, often resisting mind. Once, as I was lecturing to about 35 students I found myself walking over to a woman in the front row who appeared to be in acute pain and lightly massaging her shoulder, continuing the lecture as I did so. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, though as I looked back, I realize it was very odd classroom behavior. More oddly, though, no one seemed to object, or even take note, and I remember that she visibly relaxed. So it was a good thing to do, but not a good for which I take any particular credit for “being kind” or even “sensitive.” I just registered her pain and acted in response.
I’ve made major decisions without much attention to the long pro and con lists someone always recommends — so many that it almost seems to me sometimes that a criterion of a valid and right-minded decision is one that comes from somewhere beyond the mind, takes you by surprise, and is already effectively made by the time you realize you’ve made it.
It’s a subtle process — the movement from perception to action that takes a route through the heart rather than the mind. It has a certain gift-character; control and planning seem beside the point when I’m in the midst of a situation that evokes a vivid and immediate intuitive response: “Yes, I’m on my way.” “No, I’m not going to walk into that conflict.” “This is dangerous.” “I was on the way somewhere else, but I’m stopping here.” I went through a day once practicing the mantra, “Say yes. Whatever it is, say yes” as a way of trying to allow myself to notice these invitations. It was a mindful day. I can’t claim that I make it a consistent practice, but whenever it occurs to me to say that “yes,” the frame shifts a little, and I am brought again to the present — always the best place (and really the only place) to be.