October 30, 2022 by Cassandra Johnson
I lost myself in the best way over these last couple of months. I felt how I did most days when I began traveling on my own, getting away from limiting thoughts just related to myself and following moments that captured my focus.
As I was getting increasingly enthusiastic about my student’s latest accomplishment, I realized something I had practiced unknowingly before. I knew the feeling but could not put a name to it. Now I have a better understanding of how lost I have been recently… how lost I can get.
You see … in my spare time, I teach English to a number of people with lessons online or we just have conversations to help them grow their communication skills with our chosen/random topics and my tips. Although one of my most recent students and I were excited about future prospects, I really came away knowing we were wrapped up in the present moment. Time flew and has been flying each time.
So I have been carrying on lately, not absent of visions of dreams and goals but trying more so to mimic the calm the mind has when I’m interacting with my students. I’m only just a bit ahead in where we can go in our lessons and we are getting to know each other. The clock takes care of itself and lets us know when we have 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 10 seconds and then our goodbyes.
I want to be more grounded in daily activities, especially with the help of other people. I want to be everyday-satiated like travel-me, teacher-me and translations-completed me. I see there is some peace to be had there. There is peace away from a demanding world.
The world otherwise seems to demand our planning. We easily get to forgetting the idea that we can be okay right now, not one step ahead, too much into what is next or lingering in some unhelpful past feelings. We could easily think to ourselves how happy we will be to live there in that achieved future or recall how vividly beautiful a past experience or relationship was.
As the teachings go, (mostly I read Eckhart Tolle), you really just always have the present moment. The past and future could be guides, can be celebrated and appreciated but recall that moving out of one and into the other simply once was and will become the present.
I like this lesson just from being caught in truly how excited I am for students to be sharing their lives and goals and with this particular one, to be caught up in how she is nicely improving and what she is doing during the last of her university days.
Here we are, being truly alive and not lamenting or hoping to either extreme. We will naturally reminisce (I think that’s lovely). We also naturally plan for the future (that’s normal and needed for hope). I still feel that’s okay just like I feel it is okay and natural to have a range of emotions. It is only getting stuck in the past or distractingly projecting ahead that keeps us from our present chances at having satisfaction.
