What Will Transpire?

I’m a ruminator. I spend more time inside my mind either trying to understand the past or plan for the future than I do in my body in most moments, unless I’m in pain or uncomfortable.

I get very little enjoyment from hanging out in my mind in endless rumination. Seeing everything as a problem to be solved, with utmost efficiency of course, is draining and depressing. And yet, as uncomfortable as it is, it’s my comfort zone (even though little comfort results from all that cognitive activity). It’s a well worn path to a place I know, a place where I think I have some control.

My therapist recently suggested that I flip my top-down orientation and attempt to live from the bottom up. Rather than starting with the scenarios my mind creates, start with my feet on the ground, the things I hear and feel, the actual physical reality of what is.

I started meditating at the end of last year and started incorporating that idea into my sessions this week. Sitting with myself and just watching my thoughts while staying in my body helps remind me that I can’t change what has happened by running myself through all the “if onlys” of the past and wanting things to be different. I also can’t control what will happen by trying to devine and devise plans for all the “what ifs” to come. If something is really wrong, my body will know and will tell me in the moment as long as I’m present to hear it instead of lost my mind’s stories.

There really is only what is right here, right now. And again now. And now. Here and now is all there is. Here and now, right now, I am ok.