Living overseas, away from family and long-time friends, isn’t always easy. You get homesick, you feel guilty, you question your choices… you miss “your people”. But on the other hand, every reunion with your loved ones is a celebration. A precious, cherished, moment. My mum (on the photo above with me) came for a visit from France just before Christmas, and stayed with us for almost 6 weeks. It was only her second visit over the past 7 years that I have lived in Melbourne. I was so excited! I made a point to get everything organised and ready before she arrives. I vacuumed, dusted, cleaned the whole place. Revamped my “yoga room” into a guest room (eeek… Aparigraha, practicing non-attachment big time). Booked flights to Tasmania, hired a car for our road trip, researched and drafted our itinerary. I went grocery shopping. I also wrote lists. All sorts of lists: to do, to see, to eat… lots of lists! I aimed at preparing my class plans for when I’d return teaching early in January. Failed. I wrote another list for the things I’d need to get onto after my mum left. My goal was clear: spend as much time as possible with my mum. Not stress about anything. Being there. For her. I didn’t manage to do everything that I planned to, but I did enough.

“When you love someone,
the best thing you can offer
is your presence.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

Being there with someone doesn’t just mean to be physically with that person. You can be having a coffee with a friend and being totally somewhere else. Lost in thoughts, preoccupied or daydreaming! Even worst, lost messing around with your phone. A sad reality of our modern society… and we’ve all been there! Being there with someone also means to give her/him your full attention. To be there with someone means body + mind together. It means being present, truly. And it’s only when you are truly present with someone that you become real. The other person becomes real. And life is real in that moment. You bring happiness to yourself, you bring happiness to the other person.

I found myself not being present with my mum at times. My mind was lost in anticipation of the next excursion, the next meal and even the next moment to do nothing at all. Despite knowing that my mum came all this way from France to simply be with me, despite having the best intentions to make her stay memorable, I was sometimes not there for her. I was not being truly present.

A few simple ways to be truly present:

• While catching up with a friend: stop whatever else you’re doing and give her/him your undivided attention. Stop whatever else you’re doing including writing a Facebook post to tell all your other “friends” how excited you are to be catching up with the person in front of you. If it’s not an appropriate time to be catching up because you have other things on your mind, simply be honest! Explain your reason and reschedule. Reschedule at another time where nothing else is on your mind.
• While having a meal: appreciate what’s in your plate. Where it comes from. Who made it. How it looks. What it smells like. Taste every mouthful. Notice the textures, the flavours. Chew slowly. Swallow. Pause. Notice if you are getting full. Repeat.
• While working: if you work on a computer, open only the program you are working on. If you do research online, open only one tab in your browser. Notice when you are tempting to start another task whereas the one you are currently working on has not been completed. Bring your attention back on that task until it’s done.
• With yourself: life by nature is ever changing. We have good days, we have not so good days, and some other days are a bit of a mix. When you feel agitated, preoccupied, distressed or simply distracted, p.a.u.s.e. Come back to your breath. Observe your breath flowing in & out through your nostrils. Then encourage your breath to lengthen, cultivate a slow deep breath and stay with it for a few moments. Notice the change!

Being present is a full time practice.

As I was writing this post, I paused for lunch. I went to the kitchen, made a beautiful salad and I sat out in the sun to eat and savour it. Note: I did NOT sit in front of my laptop. Hurray! But wait… I came back in, cleaned up and thought I’d have a little piece of cheese. Before I knew it, I was eating my cheese in front of my laptop [sigh…]. I was not being present with my writing, nor was I honouring the last of the cheeses that my mum “smuggled”! Oops. Being present is a full time practice. We may not be good at it every day, in each moment. But the more we train ourselves to do it, the more it will become part of ourselves. Part of our lives. Real lives.

Quote Eckhart Tolle - Being Present

P.S.: It is not forgetting that I didn’t forget to wish you all a Happy New Year! I was way too much focused being truly present with my mum! But I do hope 2015 is off to a great start for you! :-)