Becoming Present to a Balance

I am a New Yorker. I ride the subway from time to time, but one specific instance stuck with me…

I shuffled through the herd of oncoming human traffic and stepped on to the Subway towards Time Square in New York City. An empty seat greeted me by the door and I sat down in relief that my fingers could avoid the greasy handrails. Without thinking, I looked down into my purse. I pulled out my cell phone only to find that the ‘zero service’ calibrator would restrain me from making unnecessary text messages to pass the time.

So instead I looked up.

In front of me sat a middle-aged Hispanic woman holding on to a small carriage with a sleeping baby. Her clothes were worn and her pants too short for her legs. I wondered how long she’d owned them.

The subway came to its first halt and the man standing beside me jolted forward. In that moment, the sleeping baby was shaken to awareness. Just as her eyebrows crouched towards her nose and her mouth cringed for its initial outburst, the mother leaned into the carriage and took her hand. The baby’s tears disappeared from her face, and she looked back up into the mother’s eyes and a virtuous smile came onto her face.

It’s amazing how a baby smiles. It’s as if they’re the only people in the world who understand what it means to feel like everything is going to be okay.

Suddenly I felt grateful for the lack of cell reception.  

I continued to look around.

The man standing next to me was dressed in a black suit and tie with shiny brown shoes. I wondered where he was coming from. Next to him was an aged, African American woman reading a newspaper. In the corner of the train was a homeless man holding a jar half-filled with nickels. I wondered where he would eat his next meal. Next to him was a girl about my age looking out the window. I turned to the window to see what she was looking at – darkness. I wondered what they were all wondering about.

The train then came to it’s second jolt. It was time for me to step back into consciousness.

But then I asked myself. What is consciousness? I had just spent the last 7 minutes of my life merely being present to the circumstances around me.

As I walked up the stairs and into the streets of NYC, the moment hit me again. There are so may people in this world. And the word “so” does not do justice to the 7.03 billion to which it refers. 

And each one of those people has a story. 

Each one of those people has the potential to bring a smile to the world. 

Each one of those people has a gift, a dream, a purpose.

Yet in America we live a predetermined existence. We are expected to get good grades, get a good job, to support our families. Where in that expectation is the measure of happiness? Where in that expectation are the intangibles? The moments that we take each other’s hands and tell each other that everything will be okay.

I feel rushed. I feel like each moment is a moment I should be doing something else. The “To-do” list on the side of my i-Cal reads a series of events:

-       Review pivot tables in Excel

-       Call company about new office location

-       Read Chapter 5 Business Law

-       Fill out Financial Aid Forms

-       Filter through e-mail

The list continues but I won’t bore you with my to-dos (I’m sure you’ve got plenty of your own). My point is, however, where on that list is this:

-       Eat dinner with family

-       Walk dog through park

-       Call Grandma

-       Watch a movie with friends

-       Go on vacation

-       Travel the world

-   Create a better relationship with my mom

So often we focus on the minor “to-do’s,” but when do we focus on our dreams? When do we take the time to sit down, and actually write down, acknowledge, and accomplish our dreams?

According to a recent “Business Week” cover story, “about 60% of Americans are often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at work. To avoid wasting time, we (Americans) are talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out.”

So how do we accomplish all of the things we both need and want to accomplish in our lives?

My answer is we become present. We become present to the world and the people around us. We become present to ourselves and our own intentions.

We allow ourselves to feel like everything is okay just by the smile on a young child’s face. We pass that smile on to the businessman, to the old woman, to the homeless man, to the teenager…

We become present to the fact that life is not defined by the amount of dollars in our bank account or the amount of time we put in at the office. 

It is about the intangibles. The positive feelings we get from a job that we love, the people we love, the little moments that make us happy. 

It is time to become aware that the "American" vision of success may not align with our own personal ideas about it. It is time to realize that we are all unique, and we all have the power to create our own visions of success, and that those visions are conformed by the balance that we so chose for our lives.