For
at least the last couple of decades the
most common spiritual advice must
have been some variant on the need
to live in the now. Forget the past, the wisdom goes—you
can’t change or do anything about it and you certainly can’t go back to it. Likewise, don’t dwell on the future—no matter your dreams, no matter how carefully you
have planned, there is no way to insure
your hopes or on the other hand
avoid your greatest dread. Be content to be present
in the moment you are living now the only time in which your actions or inactions make reality.
The
advice is grounded in Buddhist thought and
practice but has spread broadly to all sorts of New Age Spirituality, liberal Christianity,
some Jews who find similar teaching
in the Talmud, and even among the
so-called Nones and Brights who ordinarily brook no truck “mystictristic bull shit” and see it as
a refutation of prayer and divine
intervention and an affirmation that
humans hold their lives in their own hands. Since my own Unitarian Universalists include all of those folks, it is no
surprise that it is a regular sermon
topic.
In
addition to meditation sessions, Sunday services, spiritual essays, and self-help books the message can be
found on wall plaques, coffee mugs, and social media memes.
All
very well and good. It makes a lot of sense in many ways. But I have found it somewhat off-putting, perhaps because I am a half-assed historian and sometime memoirist who loves old songs, old books, and old movies. I am also, or was as a younger man a master of the day dream and spinner of all manner of future
glories none of which ever came to
pass but were pleasant to contemplate. But I could not quite put my finger on my
discomfort until Billy Collins recently
provided me with an ah-haw moment.
Collins
is one of the best loved and most widely read contemporary American poets. He was an exceptionally high profile United States Poet Laureate from 2001-03. He disdains obscurity and embraces a plain
spoken, conversational style. To read, or better yet listen to him read one of his pieces is to feel that you are engaged in a wonderful conversation with a witty
friend. His topics are often seemingly mundane,
reflecting on ordinary life and
its sometimes surprises. He stands
outside any literary movement. All of this has made him suspect to many academics,
some of whom seem to regard widespread popularity
with general readers as proof of shallowness.
But
Collins can take those common place
topics and give them an unexpected
spin often with wry humor. The Present from his 2016 Random House collection The Rain in Portugal precisely echoed
the feelings I had but could not express. That’s what great poets do.
The Present
Much has been
said about being in the present.
It’s the place
to be, according to the gurus,
like the latest
club on the downtown scene,
but no one, it seems,
is able to give you directions.
It doesn’t seem
desirable or even possible
to wake up every
morning and begin
leaping from one
second into the next
until you fall
exhausted back into bed.
Plus, there’d be
no past
with so many
scenes to savor and regret,
and no future,
the place you will die
but not before
flying around with a jet-pack.
The trouble with
the present is
that it’s always
in a state of vanishing.
Take the second
it takes to end
this sentence
with a period––already gone.
What about the
moment that exists
between banging
your thumb
with a hammer
and realizing
you are in a
whole lot of pain?
What about the
one that occurs
after you hear
the punch line
but before you
get the joke?
Is that where
the wise men want us to live
in that
intervening tick, the tiny slot
that occurs
after you have spent hours
searching
downtown for that new club
and just before
you give up and head back home?
—Billy Collins
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