Bal Harbour

110 BAL HARBOUR hen I was in elementary school we lived for a few years in Lagos, Nigeria, in a house that had two living rooms: the grown-up one, where neither my siblings nor I were allowed to play, and the everyday family one, where we did everything from watch TV to turn the couch cushions into rafts to save us from the raging carpeted sea below. As children, we were ƂPGKPQWTTGIWNCVGFSWCTVGTU but with one condition. The encyclopedias were in the grown up parlor, and I loved reading them. Some evenings after dinner, I'd sneak off to sit in the corner by the large bookcase where they lived on the bottom shelf. I'd look for the volumes labeled G, R and M—for Gods, and Greece, Rome and Mythology—and bury my head. I was obsessed with these ancient stories that creatively explained the world. When I was reading, I was lost between the pages. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized something very important was happening in those minutes of my childhood that felt like hours. Without strain or complication, I was practicing being fully present. By simply embracing what was before me at the moment, one sentence at a time, I was learning to attend intentionally to the world. Decades later, I still think about those evenings because I truly believe they taught me something invaluable about how to live well. They taught me that there is no grander invitation to receiving what life has to offer like living in the present. And, what's been hard to shake all these years, even though I didn't have the words for it as a child, is the feeling of a rootedness to my own sense of self. Because I was so immersed in my experience, I felt a grounding, a connection to something that +UVKNNECPoVSWKVGCTVKEWNCVG6JGRCUVQTVJGHWVWTGYGTGPQVC limiting or worrying concern. There was, in a way, an evaporation of time. And it was only through my ability to be present that I could experience what the moment had to offer me. At the time, those offerings ranged from plain old joy to an expanding KOCIKPCVKQPVQCSWKGVUVKVEJKPIYKVJKPOGCDQWVVJGRQYGTQH stories as channels of understanding, to some growing awareness You Are Here Author Enuma Okoro shares her notes on living a good life. ILLUSTRATION BY KATHY KIM that stillness and attentiveness (and even aloneness) were not things to run away from. I felt wrapped in the world of those stories. I imbibed them, and VJG[PQWTKUJGFCPFUCVKUƂGF something within me. Even when I was pulled away by someone to something else, I still left sustained again. That YCUCNUQCUKIPKƂECPVRCTVQH it—to intuit that being present to myself, and to a moment, could create in me a more hospitable space for engaging others in the world. This dwelling in the present has been an invaluable practice I've had to learn again as an adult, in order to keep moving towards a life I consider well lived. Living in the present is still the most grounding practice I have, and it plays itself out in different ways throughout the day. I begin each morning with the intentional recognition that this day is the only one I have for now, and vow to myself to try to pay attention to it, and to try to show up fully in it. I believe that life is always asking us to see a little bit more than what we are looking for. Part of the practice is acknowledging that both my body and my mind can help me interpret what life is offering me in real time. I am increasingly learning to listen to what is happening in the world around me, and in the world within me. I am increasingly aware not just of my actions, but of my feelings and thoughts and how they work together. Practicing living in the present also means learning to trust that even when things are uncomfortable, or poorly timed, or unplanned—even when the present moment is trimmed with its own sorrows—by standing within it I can best access what life is offering me at any given time and can best see and evaluate what I am being offered as I consider a next step. At times it might feel like living in the present is impractical. We live in societies and cultures that spin off our preoccupation with worrying about a future that hasn't come, making us less intentional about the demands of the present moment right before us. But how do we determine what's best for the future without close attention to what is happening right now, without reading the pages of our lives one at a time, line by precious line? W

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