Dani Shapiro
March 6, 2010

108.

I have been fighting the urge, lately, when asked how I’m doing, to use words like “overwhelmed” or “busy” or “crazed”–even though those are familiar feelings.  I’ve been on book tour for a month, and I have learned that anything is possible if, as they say in Twelve Step programs, I take it a day at a time.  I don’t need to think about what will happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month–or even in the next hour.  If I do what is in front of me, if I focus on it, if I stay in the moment, then the rest of it falls away, and I am no longer overwhelmed, or busy, or crazed.

It so clearly all comes down to mindfulness.  To living in the moment, which is perhaps our greatest challenge in life.  When I am fully engaged in the moment, the moment expands infinitely.  When I am just here, right now, and nowhere else, there is a joy and an aliveness in that–no matter what is going on.  In yoga–in a pose called Warrior Two, or Virabhadrasana–it is possible to feel the physical manifestation of this.  If I become aware that I am leaning a bit forward (into the future) or backward (into the past) there is the possibility of correcting this, and moving toward proper alignment.  Straight up and down, balanced between future and past–right here, only here, in the infinite present.