being present

I've been thinking about awareness and what it means to stay in the present moment. I spend the vast majority of my moments physically present but mentally elsewhere--often either worrying about the future or reliving the past.

It's not a new topic for me. I especially ponder these things when I am returning to a meditation practice after a long absence. In this case, a new and fertile context in which to practice mindfulness is as caregiver to my parents, who have both been quite ill in recent months.

Today, I was watching a YouTube video of one of my father's violin teachers, Jascha Heifetz, as he played a famous and extremely challenging work from memory in a recording studio. He did it in one take:

It is not a flawless performance. In this day and age, a recording engineer would surely be tempted to go in and "clean up" a few little imperfections here and there. But what stands out for me in this and virtually every recording I've ever heard from this violinist, even beyond his evident skill and artistry, is his incredible focus. Whenever he is playing the violin, Mr. Heifetz is a shining example of a human being in flow, fully present, from moment to moment.

It is essential to cultivate this kind of awareness in performing. Even an instant of reaching back in memory to a passage you already played (perhaps differently than you expected) or getting ahead of yourself and dropping your concentration out of sheer relief, once you make it through a particularly difficult passage or when the end is finally in sight, can cause an entire performance to unravel.

I have reminded students and choirs many times of this very phenomenon just before they go on stage: Stay focused; stay present. If something happens that you don't like or didn't expect--whether good or bad--don't dwell on it; don't get stuck there. It's not the time to investigate. You can reflect on it later. Stay with what you are actually singing or playing, not what you already did or will be doing in a few moments.

While I have sporadically attempted mindfulness meditation during some periods of my life and found it to be a valuable practice, I'm a long way from what anyone could call an experienced mediator in any classic, formal sense. But I am an experienced musician, teacher, and performer and the child of two even more experienced musicians, teachers, and performers. I grew up in an environment which was focused on making beautiful music. So my Epiphany for today is that I have far more experience in mindfulness practice than I had previously recognized.

What are the areas of your life or the activities during which you feel most fully present and alive?