GreatRome

As I write this piece, my mind is preoccupied with so many things. Both essential and non-essential ones. Clearing my mind of some cobwebs proved to be difficult as some thoughts were insisting to occupy a significant space in my mind.

I remember when cleaning our room seemed to be a not so easy chore to do. Why? Because I would easily bump my leg to a wooden cabinet causing bruise or wound instantly. Sometimes it was my arm that would hit the edge of a cabinet making me pause for a while and wait until the pain had subsided. When I showed the marks to my mother she told me, "you were always thinking of so many things!" She was right then.

Too many thoughts, not related to what I was doing that time, prevented me to have a glimpse of those furnitures strategically placed in our room.

One morning, I had to rush to my transcription school because we would be having our long quiz, our first. As you know, this mode of transportation is usually jampacked with passengers shortly before the beginning of office or school hours. You can even smell the breath of people around you even if it seems that they are not breathing due to lack of breathing space inside. I was recalling the lessons I had reviewed the night before. I was unmindful of the condition inside the train as I racked my brains, trying very hard to review all the necessary details for the exam. I felt so exhausted and weary even if I had forgotten only a few of them, which may be unnecessary I thought. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. I shifted my head to my right and opened my eyes. I noticed a woman with long hair. Not the kind of hair you see and envy in a shampoo commercial. She had nice curls and her hairstrands were dyed light brown. I felt good staring at her hair. It was relaxing to me. It would be quite a crime if I would not let her know my admiration to her hair. "You have such nice curls," I told her. She smiled and said, "Oh, they are natural curls. You are not the only one who complemented my hair."

After that I moved my head to my left and started watching the buildings we passed by. Suddenly, the missing details that I wanted badly appeared in my mind as I, once again, closed my eyes. As expected, I did very well in my exam.

We always do that. When we are busy with a particular activity, we always tell ourselves that we should finish what we are doing ahead of time so we can go home early and rest. We always think of the future, the rewards that we will get, the next appoinment that we have to attend to. If not the future, we allow our past experiences to be replayed in our minds while working on assigned tasks. Then we complain that our work becomes boring, difficult and not making us happy anymore. We blame our co-workers, the department we are in and all these result to our being mediocre and unworthy of our jobs. We do not notice that the real reason is what preoccupies our minds. We are not concentrating in what we are supposed to do and this makes our jobs even harder.

Our teacher in Meditation class told us that one of the advantages of our studies is to help us focus or concentrate on what we are doing at the moment so that we can achieve the desired result. She emphasized that what we have at the moment is the most important. Past is past and you can never change it. The future? You will really never know what will happen next.

The now is what we have and we should nurture it. If we are focused on what we have or do at the moment, we can find happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction because we have all the time to work on it, perfect it, making it our masterpiece. A work that shows our dedication, love and passion. If we are happy with what we are doing now, we can draw strength and joy from it. It helps us to be a better person. We learn to enjoy what we have now be it a small income, small but modest house. All these are magnified ten times more as we learn to appreciate the beauty of minding the "now."

We become more positive as we go on because we let go of our past and we let God take care of our future. Worries, disappointments and frustrations do not have spots in our psyches.

We know in our hearts that since the "now" is our preoccupation at the moment, we can shape it, we can mold it, we can sculpt it to be our best representation and the goodness that we produce out of it can make us truly whole, better and perhaps, best.