A few mornings ago, I was eating my avocado toast, with two of Ed’s perfectly fried eggs on top, thoughts darting through my mind like gnats—the pozole I’ll make this afternoon, the onions I need to buy, which novel to use for my book review, can I put off washing clothes for one more day, dare I watch the upcoming “presidential” address, did I hurt that woman’s feelings when I had to run out on our conversation—when I remembered another young woman at an AA meeting over thirty years ago.

“This morning,” she said, “I was five minutes into my breakfast, and I realized I hadn’t even tasted my food, and I said to myself, ‘Pay attention! You’re eating eggs, okay? You’re eating eggs!’” People nodded, laughed, said “Been there, done that!” I nodded hard as anybody.

I’d been trying to pay attention to immediate circumstances instead of head-tripping through my own chaotic universe, ever since I read The Three Pillars of Zen in the late sixties. I’d had minimal success. “My mind has a mind of its own,” Jimmy Gilmore sings, and I knew then and know now just what he means.

I’m still trying, though. On New Year’s Day, I posted on Facebook that my word for 2019 is “Present”. And though I was complimented for picking a word that’s both a noun (I got a present—Yippee!) and a verb (“May I present to you our new president whose initials are not DT!”), my meaning of the word is an adjective, as in “I am entirely present in this moment.”

I can’t count the number of prophets and priests and sages and teachers who point to this way of being in the world as the way to spiritual enlightenment and a satisfying life. Since I’m so bad at being in the moment, I count on things they’ve said and images I hold of them to help me.

I see Jesus, standing in a garden, his face glowing with compassion, his voice strong, when he tells his disciple friends, “Take no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take thought for the things of itself.”

I see Ram Dass in Fierce Grace, the documentary about the debilitating stroke which left him, a formerly astute speaker, with his speech greatly compromised. I see his slack lip and shuffling gait as he slurs, “I take one step. And then I take another. And the first one’s alright, and the next one’s alright, and the next one after that, well, it’s alright too.”

I see Eckart Tolle’s elfin face, when I remember a quote from The Power of Now. “When you sweep your floor, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting for the elevator—Instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.”

A still, alert presence. That’s the wannabe me. So, this morning in the bathroom, as my NY Times Health Challenge suggested, I stood on one leg and then the other, balancing myself as I brushed my teeth. Though I staggered like a drunk, I did it for two whole minutes. And for a few seconds, I was entirely present. I was “mindless”. I was “there”. It was enough to keep me trying, and a present to myself in the New Year.

Happy New Year to you. May your steps be alright. The first one and the next one, and the one after that—may it be alright too.

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