The Year That Got Away

While I wasn’t paying attention, another year slipped away. No sense asking how it happened or where it went, the annual cliché questions. In reality, all we did was flip a page on a man-made calendar, which informed us that 2008 was over and 2009 had begun. In truth, geologically speaking, at midnight on December 31, we are actually celebrating 4,600,000,001 (or in that neighborhood), since that’s how old our little planet is. Whatever the real date may be, it feels to me that time is speeding up as I get older. That isn’t such a bizarre notion. Time really does fly or drag, according to Einstein. Sometimes, it even stands still. When I was young, it moved very slowly, and I thought I had forever. Now, I know I don’t.

I find it puzzling that we in the West don’t believe we’re ever going to die. Of course, that isn’t rational. Intellectually, we know everyone dies. We hear about death every day. We see it on the news. We lose loved ones. Yet, until we come face to face with death through illness or accident, we just refuse to accept it will ever happen to us. Because we think we are immortal, many of us sail through our days in a daze. We don’t pay attention to the here and now because we’re busy doing other things.

Our minds are elsewhere — in the past, which seems better than it may have been when we were there; in the future, where we plan or worry about events that may never happen; or nowhere in particular, where we just wander and float. It seems very difficult to stay put, right here, right now. I’d say it’s the human condition, but there are humans on the planet who actually do pay attention to what is going on in their lives at the very moment it is happening. And they’re not all Buddhist monks.

In 1970, a Harvard professor who experimented with LSD, studied with a guru, and changed his name to Baba Ram Das, wrote a book called Be Here Now. Hippies loved it; personal development experts loved it; those in search of a new way to be loved it. Now, some 40 years later, the idea is back in fashion. "Mindfullness" is all the rage. Old concept (way older than Baba Ram Das); new packaging. The idea, however, still has merit.

If we were really here, now, right this minute, at the end of 2009 (or 4,600, 000,001), would we all be asking what happened to last year? I doubt it.