Roll Call. Are You Here?
Do you remember when they called Roll at school? Maybe they still do, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to respond to a roll call. The response was usually “Here” or “Present.” Actually, we were neither. We usually wanted to be somewhere else.
Viktor Frankl spent 5 years of his life in a Nazi concentration camp. He surely wanted to be somewhere else. He lost his family and his life’s work. He saw and experienced things that no human should ever experience. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and revenge, it was him. But, he didn’t. He spent his time in the camps ministering to his fellow prisoners and giving them hope. He survived and went on to write Man’s Search for Meaning, the story of his time in the death camps. He coined one of the most memorable and meaningful phrases ever written:
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”
In that space lies our freedom. When we are responding outside of that space, we aren’t free because those responses are mostly conditioned responses learned early on in defense of our ego.
That all sounds good, but the question always arises, “How do I do that.”
I got more insight into that question during my week with Russ Hudson, the expert on the Enneagram. I learned about the three centers of intelligence in all of us: Body, Head, and Heart. We have all three of those operating in us, but we choose to live primarily in one of them. I’m a head person. I live in my thoughts, sometimes to the exclusion of my heart and body. I can overthink everything, missing out on some of the subtleties and joys of life. Where is your home base?
I learned that to be truly present, we have to bring all three centers into alignment. Be here now in our head, heart, and body. When that happens, we’re able to see and experience reality more clearly.
Back to the “how” question. It’s simply a matter of paying attention. Pay attention to your body. What’s going on right now? Pay attention to your mind. What kind of thoughts are whirling through your mind right now? Pay attention to your heart. What are you feeling right now? By cultivating awareness, we become more attuned to the present moment experience.
Let’s not forget that the present moment is where it’s happening. We’re making up the future, and even the past to suit our beliefs.