The Present Moment. The Now.
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Presence. Mindfulness. Attention. Awareness.
What are these words pointing to?
The present moment. The Now.
And yet, this so-called Now is elusive—one moment dissolving into the next, like waves washing onto a shore. You might catch a wave while surfing, or capture one in a photograph. But can you catch a Now…right now?
Even if you can’t catch it, you can sense it. Inside, the Now is always shifting—through body sensations, emotions, thoughts, images. A continuous unfolding.
What does this reveal about life?
That it is alive. Always changing. Never static.
And we are part of this process.
And still, we carry a sense of solidity—of who we are, who others are. You feel the ground beneath your feet, the firmness of your desk, or the device in your hands. Yet nothing has permanent existence. Not you. Not me. Not anything around us. Even rocks erode, fragment, become sand.
So what if we met each fleeting moment—each rich constellation of experience—as an opportunity?
An opportunity to co-create what is happening now…and what might happen next.
We Are Part of Something Vast
As complexity scientist and evolutionary ecologist Alexandra Penn reminds us, we are “part of something huge…in a dance with the world.” We are not separate from it, and it is not separate from us.
In In Search of Now, Jo Marchant highlights Penn’s insight that organisms and environments evolve together—an open-ended process of interconnection and invention, shaping us even as we shape it.
Similarly, Alicia Juarrero, author of Context Changes Everything, writes that moment by moment, “we shape the world as the world shapes us.”
We are always affecting and being affected—changing, as the world changes—in a flowing stream of what Marchant calls “integrated moments.”
Conscious Choices and Actions Matter
In Space Is Not Empty, Alan Briskin and I describe fields of energy, information, and relationship—fields in which we are embedded—as a supremely influential element in this ongoing dance.
Because of this, our choices matter.
They matter because we have agency. We have impact.
We can nurture what is life-giving—or inhibit it.
And this is where the Now becomes essential.
To elevate what is vital and generative, we must be present. We must notice what we are paying attention to, so we can choose—consciously—how we speak and act.
These choices matter more than we might think.
Recently, in a virtual workshop on cultivating fields for conscious leadership, a participant shared something striking: the field she was experiencing felt both life-giving and constricting.
Both.
As she told her story, it became clear how this can happen. Even with her sincere effort to listen and respond in ways that opened possibility, the other person remained reactive—tightening the field with blame and anger.
In that moment, her agency met its limits.
The field did not shift between them.
And yet, by sharing her experience, she contributed something vital—an insight that enlivened the larger group.
Fields can be like this.
Not always movable by one person’s best intentions.
Sometimes they linger, asking us to metabolize what happened, our part in it, and what it might teach us.
Attention. Awareness. Presence. Now.
Here is the challenge:
To make conscious choices…
To stay present, aware…
To exercise agency in service of what is life-giving…
We must keep noticing what we are paying attention to.
We must stay connected to what matters most.
All while knowing: the field may remain constricted for a time.
So what are you paying attention to right now?
And if the field feels tight or constrained—
what might you say or do that could open it, even slightly?
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