Mindfulness

What exactly does it mean to be present? It’s a question I’ve written about before, yet here I am again—writing another version of it. Maybe that’s the point. Presence isn’t something you figure out once and move on from. It’s a practice, a remembering. It’s a tricky concept—hard to describe, slippery to pin down. Presence seems to have layers. But maybe the best way to understand what presence is is to first talk about what it isn’t.

Kindness and niceness aren’t the same thing. This may sound like I’m splitting hairs, but once you notice the difference it’s hard to unsee. I first bumped into this idea through the New York stereotype—how people who don’t live here love to say New Yorkers are rude. I don’t buy it. New Yorkers just have a different concept of what counts as rude.

It’s easy to be negative, cynical, and pessimistic. What’s incredibly admirable are those who manage to stay positive in difficult times. Everyone’s version of “difficult” is different, and what’s easy for some may be incredibly challenging for others. I think one reason we might go down the path of negative thinking is that we forget to put things into perspective. At any moment, there are an infinite number of things that could go wrong, which could suddenly turn your delightful Sunday afternoon into a weekend disaster.

I’ve always been wrapped up in the idea of my own identity. Lately, though, I’m trying to let that go. Identity is a curious thing. It’s tricky to define, yet most of us carry some concept of who we are, some internal story we tell ourselves. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who’d spent time at an ashram in India. He went there to meditate, to simply be, perhaps to do nothing at all.

As a child of the internet age, I have barely known a world without it. Although I grew up in a transitional time—computers were commonplace but the internet itself was far from ubiquitous in my childhood—I still find it difficult to imagine life without instant access to the boundless information, entertainment, and superficial connection we all get from the internet.

At the yoga studio, many people come and go. Often, you encounter newcomers who treat their first yoga class like a HIIT workout. They rush through transitions, sometimes literally jumping between poses (āsanas). In their minds, yoga seems less like a deliberate flow and more like a race to the finish line. They might substitute five rapid pushups for a single, controlled chaturanga (often missing the pose’s subtleties), and fly through their upward-facing dog without syncing movement to breath.

I was recently banned from Rover, a specialized craigslist website for finding pet sitters and dog walkers. They didn’t specify why exactly, though I know the walker claimed my dog bit her. I find this claim suspicious since my dogs have never bitten anyone before, certainly not hard enough to break skin, and her story contained several inconsistencies.

I was sitting on the subway the other day and glanced up from my book to notice something that shouldn’t be remarkable, yet somehow was: every single person in my line of sight was staring at their phone. This wasn’t the first time I’d observed this phenomenon, but something about this particular moment struck me differently. It wasn’t just that everyone was looking at their phones—it was the mechanical thumb-scrolling and the complete disconnection from their surroundings.

I’ve been thinking a lot about boredom lately—specifically, how we’ve become so good at avoiding it. We reach for our phones at the slightest hint of downtime, filling every possible moment with scrolling, tapping, and consuming. It’s as if we’ve collectively decided that being alone with our thoughts is some kind of punishment to be avoided at all costs.

Reflecting on the landscape of my past mistakes, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern: moments when my ego seized the controls and steered me off course. The abstract concept of “staying humble” sounds straightforward until we’re faced with real-world situations that challenge our self-image. Only when something valuable slips away do we fully grasp what humility might have preserved.