3 Ideas for Now

     Well, it's officially 2012.  I hope everyone had a great new year celebration.  New Years time is a time for hope, new beginnings, and resolutions, as I wrote about yesterday.  It's like a universal reset button for the mind; we can feel like last year is behind us (because it is) and work on changing ourselves for the better.  While the week of January 1st is uplifting and refreshing, it's also intimidating.  The numerical change of year from 2011 to 2012 is daunting; it's a very real reminder that time passes and our experiences are all fleeting, no matter how permanent they may feel.  Whether we like it or not, time continues its passage and doesn't take human necessity into consideration (even though we're the ones who came up with the whole idea in the first place!).  

    I don't mean to get into this to intimidate readers about the new year.  I know, for me, New Years has often felt bittersweet-- it's a time for new beginnings, but it's also a reminder of an end.  But, as Zen thinkers, we aim to transcend the very ideas of 'beginning' and 'end'.  You've heard it a million times:  live in the present.  Don't live so much in the present that it's harmful to yourself and those around you, but aim to appreciate the moment you're in rather than the moment you were in 5 minutes ago or will be in 5 hours from now.  We've all had the humbling feeling of realizing, "Jeez, 10 years ago felt like yesterday."  I always think of the Pink Floyd lyric from Time, "And then one day you'll find, ten years have got behind you.  No one told you when to run; you missed the starting gun."  In this sense, running means being in the present.  If you're not already doing it, I'd advocate running all the time.  

     Recognizing that time has passed despite our lack of conscious attention to it is often the result of the habits we've built up day-to-day.  If you do the same things every day, chances are you're not going to be able to distinguish those daily memories as easily, and your life will feel as if it's just flying by.  There are little things we can do to enhance the enjoyment of the present and prevent ourselves from feeling like time is slipping away.  Here are 3 tips...

1.     Do something new right now.

Brush your teeth with the opposite hand.  Talk to a stranger on the subway or the bus. Call up a relative or friend you've fallen out of touch with.  Order the weirdest sounding thing on the menu.  In doing something out of the ordinary, you're guaranteeing yourself that you'll have a memorable experience.  

2.    Meditate.

The idea of 'enlightenment' is really fragile, but the nature of the word itself is to see what was once darkened and unseeable.  In closing your eyes and meditating, for any period of time, you're allowing yourself to re-orient yourself to the world afterward.  If you meditated every day for a year, I can guarantee you'd start looking at things differently.  And, in gaining a new perspective, you're back to tip #1.  The real key here is coming at your life from a new point of view.  Doing this is like slowing down time, because it makes the present moment more interesting and less about habit or monotony.

3.  Don't oversleep.

This seems obvious, but maybe time feels like it's slipping away because it actually is.  Maybe you're sleeping through it.  I have friends who sleep 9 hours a day and take naps because they feel tired, without realizing that they're tired because they sleep too much!  I don't recommend undersleeping, but I recall rock star Keith Richards in his autobiography saying something along the lines of, "This is essentially three autobiographies, because for a good 20 years I got very little sleep.  I've lived 3 or 4 lives' worth of time."  Obviously, I would never advocate mirroring any of the habits of a 1970's Keith Richards, but he makes a good point.  Don't lose sleep, but don't sleep so much that you're missing out on living.  Do some research about the optimal amount of sleep time for your age; if you are oversleeping, start sleeping the recommended about and take your new 1 or 2 hours of extra time to do something new and productive.

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