Hi Reader,

For bath time, we have a little projector in the bathroom that shines some water-like patterns and green stars on the ceiling. My 19-month son used to ask me to turn it on, and would sit there in the bath, staring at it. The other night he was in the bath and I turned it on. He hardly noticed. Just kept playing with his toys.

I realized I'm vulnerable to the same phenomenon. My life is filled with amazing things—or at least things that amazed me at some point—that I now take almost completely for granted.

I'm spoiled rotten.

Well, maybe that's overdramatic. I'm spoiled, sure. But rotten? I'm not so sure.

I don't think it's a problem that my son doesn't notice the bath-time lights anymore. He's still appreciating stuff: playing with his toys, splashing in the water. He's still present in that childlike way.

In my own way, so am I. I rediscovered this the other day at our family's Fourth of July party: I can slow down and be present to pushing the kids on the swing, watching the trees blow in the wind, listening to the conversations around me. I'm not sure I can be present to all of it. When I try to be, it starts to feel hectic, noise, chaotic. Like there's too much going on and I want to be there for all of it but can't handle it all.

I used to think this meant that I wasn't present. What I realized the other day is that it's probably more accurate to say I'm present to not being present. Like my son in the bath, I'm always paying attention to something. Nothing wrong with that. It's just that at some point I got in the habit of paying attention to... I'm not really sure how to describe this, or if it will make sense, but... paying attention to stuff at the periphery as opposed to whatever is happening right in front of me. I even bring that about when I whip my phone out of my pocket (periphery) to glance away from whatever is happening in life (work, dinner, conversation, etc).

Upon further reflection, I'm not sure "spoiled" is the right word to use here. I think the right word is "afraid." The experience of being hyper-present (which feels like the invitation, the calling, that's being whispered to me in every moment) feels like self-abnegation. In presence, in listening, in coming home, I seem to cease to exist. (Those pesky nondualists would cite this as evidence that I don't exist in the first place.) It seems clear that part of me has learned to fear that nonexistence. To fear the very thing I say I'm called to do/be.

Nothing more to say about that for now. I'll sit with it, and I invite you to do the same with whatever comparable fear you have in your life.

I get the sense that being truly alive in the spiritual sense will require a great deal more courage than I ever knew. Maybe more than I will ever know.

Thanks for bearing witness. I invite you to read today's P.S.