We Are All Here Now

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, I heard slogans, such as “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” “Kill your parents,” “Be here now,” and others.  Then I became more than thirty and a parent, and I didn’t find the slogans so compelling any more (not that I ever did anyway).  But “Be here now” has always intrigued me.  It is a puzzling thought.  How can I avoid being here now?  

Of course, the recommendation is deeper than the trivial insight that the statement, “I am here now,” is always true, whenever and wherever I utter it.  It has to do, rather, with a distinctive way in which we can be “present” or “in the now”—connected to what is unfolding around us and open to its intense beauty.  When we are “in the now” we can achieve a deep appreciation of our surroundings, and even an awareness of what and who give meaning to our lives.  We can achieve serenity or perhaps deep insights and enlightenment.  On a slightly more mundane (but still important) level, the therapeutic and even performance-enhancing virtues of mindfulness are widely acknowledged.

But what if the here and now is not so much awe-inspiring, but really awful?  What if I am in pain—physical or mental?  What if those I love are suffering, or even the whole world—and I know it?  Why will focusing on all of this be healthy or rewarding?  Will my pain, my problems, dissolve if I attend to them fully, marinating in misery?  In the pandemic, we are all socially distanced, in our homes, lonely: we are all here now.  What good does it do to ruminate on the isolation and anguish that is all around us, and the malaise right in front of us?  The malaise has made many of us “ma-lazy” and robbed us of motivation.

The slogan, “Be here now,” apparently has a pandemic loophole—or, more generally, a “relentless suffering loophole.”  Why bother if it will make things worse?  Still, the proponents of being present—spiritual teachers, gurus, psychologists, “metaphysicians,” and others—insist on the illumination, serenity, and therapy to be gained from it.  As just one example, consider this brief passage from Eckhart Tolle, a widely-read and influential spiritual teacher: “In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve… You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.” (The Power of Now)  

Why not, though?  It is obvious that you can be trapped in the present, imprisoned by pain and suffering.  If the present moment is bad enough, why stay in it?  As Kieran Setiya puts it, “Tolle treats living in the present as a panacea, a cure for every ill… If only it were true… But this is wishful thinking.” (Midlife: A Philosophical Guide)

I think, however, that there may be a noteworthy insight in the recommendation to be in the present (or the now).  It is perhaps natural to interpret, “Be Here Now,” as emphasizing the here and now parts: keep focused, cognitively and affectively, on the here and now.  It is as if the slogan is, “Be Here Now.”  According to this interpretation, we are being implored to be a passive “mirror” of our immediate surroundings, allowing them to register on us unmediated by antecedent ways of understanding our world.  The point is about the objects of our cognitive and affective orientation: our immediate surroundings in the present.  As a passive receptacle of the pain of the present, it is understandable how we could be prisoners of our suffering.

There is, however, another–and in some respects more appealing–interpretation of “Be Here Now.”  On this view, we are being implored, in the here and now, to adopt a particular kind of being—an active, not passive, way of being connected to our surroundings.  On this view, the slogan might be expressed as, “Be Here Now.” The emphasis is not on the targets of our awareness, but on how we are aware of them.  When we take on this kind of being in the now, we are indeed attending in an unmediated way to our immediate surroundings, but that is not all.  We are also aware that it is we who are so attending.  I am not my pain.  I am not my suffering.  I am, rather, the observer of my pain and suffering. This insight represents a kind of “twist” on Descartes’ famous Cogito ergo sum argument (“I think, therefore I am”). Here the idea is: “I feel, therefore I am not my feelings,” or perhaps, “I recognize my feelings, therefore I am not identical to them.”

 In being aware of myself in this way, I preserve a “space” for myself—a space that is unmoored from present suffering.   I am not unaware of my present pain, or of that of others, but I am not imprisoned by it. I can reflect on, even “analyze” my pain, watching it go here and then there, and feel like this and then that, so to speak.  As I analyze the pain, it becomes more distant from myself—it becomes “other.”  The pain is “defanged”—it still feels bad, but it has a different role.  It is not a trap, but a springboard (as in the teachings of Dogen, the Japanese Buddhist priest, as interpreted by Kasulis).

In this distinctive kind of being I actively focus my mind on salient aspects of the world that present themselves to me, and I am intimately and lucidly aware of the pain they can cause in me.  In focusing on the pain, I also am aware that I am an observer (or “watcher,” as Tolle puts it).  Fostering this active kind of being, that involves (at least in part) an awareness of the distinction between my mental states and me, is an important element of various spiritual traditions, including forms of Buddhism and the doctrines of Gurdjieff.

Just because I am not my pain, I still have it, and it still hurts just as much.  So what’s the big deal about being here now?  The answer is that I can see that pain (and suffering) is not part of my essence—of who I am, and how I look at the world.  I do not have to view and experience the world through the lens of pain, framing everything in terms of it and not allowing the beauty and love that is all around me to shine through.  My pain is still there, but it has been removed to the periphery, not the experiential center of me. In this sense it goes away. It does not have the function of draining my life of meaning and joy. 

I once took a course in self-hypnosis for chronic pain.  The basic idea was not to focus on the pain, but on something one finds calming and pleasant—perhaps a sunset over the ocean, or a majestic, snow-capped peak, and so forth.  This strategy of distraction didn’t work for me.  In acknowledging the value of being in the present, one is recognizing the importance of being connected in a close, accurate, and honest way to the what is here and now, including pain.  Our minds are not distracted, which can weaken relationships and impair understanding.  Equally important: our minds need not be captured by the present moment.  We are not our pain, our suffering, our boredom.  Confined by social distancing to our homes, don’t kill your parents (or your kids!), trust at least some people over thirty, and Be here now!

For a companion piece by the author on presence in the “now,” see “The Problem of Now.

Acknowledgement: I am very grateful for conversations and insightful comments by James Baillie.