This essay is the first in a series I’m posting on Substack exploring how awareness changes the way we live, relate, and create.
Almost everyone yearns to feel relaxed. The yearning itself is worth paying attention to because of what it’s pointing to.
What we want when we say we want to relax is to be present. We just don’t know that’s what we’re asking for, so we wait for the vacation, the massage, or the end of a long day.
What we don’t understand is that even when life is chaotic, we can still be relaxed if we are present. Relaxation can be reached at any moment and through any activity.
If we take a moment to consciously slow down and pay attention to the body, it provides relief that brings clarity and a regulated nervous system.
When we’re under pressure and important moments arise, this relaxed state brings with it the strength of clarity. More often than not, relaxing the body has an immediate effect on the mind.
If you’re constantly worried and overthinking, the ability to slow down and meet the body tones down the mind. This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to think. It means you’ll be able to think more clearly and make better decisions from clarity rather than urgency.
You’ll also find that suffering subsides.
Something important to understand about suffering is that it arises from our denial of and resistance to the nature of life.
What I mean by this is simple. The nature of our existence is impermanence. We can all agree that nothing on this earth lasts forever, although many of us dislike that statement. Nothing stays the same for long, ourselves included. It’s all in constant flux, and many factors outside our control prove this point every day.
Perhaps the deepest truth of our existence is that life refuses to hold still, while the mind is constantly trying to make it do exactly that.
There are no guarantees in life. Uncertainty is the only certainty. And when we resist this reality, when we pretend this isn’t the truth, we suffer. We chase, we cling, we attach, whether it’s to relationships, our ideals and ideas, physical objects, or circumstances.
The Architecture of Attachment
We cling to thoughts, to the stories we create in our minds. That’s worth saying plainly, because we think we are clinging to the person. We are not. We are clinging to the story we built.
We build up a persona of a friend as polite and honest, and then life happens. We build up an idea of our spouse as faithful, and it hurts even more when we find out the truth that they are cheating. We marry with the idea of “till death do us part,” and it hurts even more when we decide to divorce. In fact, we often take longer to divorce because of that.
At some point, we stop relating to the person in front of us and start relating to the story we’ve created about them. We prefer the story because it stays the same while people don’t. Many of us mistake infatuation for love because we fall in love with the story, not the person.
People change. That isn’t a betrayal. It’s the nature of things.
The Edge of Control
So how do we live knowing that everything is changing?
We begin by accepting that we do not have complete control over our circumstances. That doesn’t mean becoming passive or giving up. We still make the effort. We do what we can to improve our lives and respond wisely to what is in front of us.
If we’re in a relationship that we want to preserve, and there is no physical danger involved, we might choose to go to couples therapy. If we lose our job, we begin looking for another one. If we’re unhappy where we live, we search for a new apartment. We take action where action is possible.
But there are no guarantees that therapy will save the relationship, that we’ll find a better job, or that the next apartment will be the right one. We make the effort without clinging to the outcome.
When we become attached to a particular result, we suffer. Our perception of reality becomes distorted because we are no longer seeing clearly. Instead, we are reacting from a dysregulated nervous system, caught in fight-or-flight and survival mode.
A dysregulated nervous system affects the way we perceive, think, and respond. It’s difficult to recognize opportunities, solve problems creatively, or make wise decisions when the body is convinced that everything is a threat.
The way to live is to remember these truths: to regulate the nervous system, to accept what lies outside of our control, and to meet life with both effort and openness. We act where we can, and we release what we cannot control.
That also requires faith. Not blind optimism, but a willingness to trust that life may unfold in ways we cannot yet imagine. To some, that may sound unrealistic or naïve. But if uncertainty is the nature of existence, what alternative do we have? We can spend our lives fighting reality, or we can learn to meet it with clarity.
The Nature of Ease
How do we make the effort without clinging to the outcome?
The answer is presence.
Presence brings a sense of relaxation and ease. It doesn’t mean becoming passive or incapable of making decisions. Nor does it mean sitting back and doing nothing. There can be tremendous clarity within action.
This idea isn’t unique to one tradition. In Judaism, it appears as hishtadlut, making a sincere effort while recognizing that the outcome is never entirely ours to control. It is paired with bitachon, trust. Buddhism speaks of attachment as a source of suffering. The language changes, but the invitation is the same: participate fully in life without trying to possess it.
Interestingly, when we act from a place of presence, the effort often doesn’t feel effortful. The struggle comes when we resist what is happening or try to force reality into matching our expectations. Presence allows us to meet each moment fully and respond to what is actually here.
If a relationship is struggling, then part of the process is going to therapy. If we show up wholeheartedly and with presence, there is no suffering in that moment. The suffering begins when therapy doesn’t save the relationship and we resist the reality that it may be over.
Of course, there will still be grief. Grief is a natural part of life. But being present with grief, rather than resisting it, is very different from becoming consumed by it.
We don’t eliminate pain. We stop adding to it.
The same is true of what happens inside us.
We tend to understand impermanence as something that happens out there, to jobs, marriages, and bodies. But thoughts and emotions have the same nature. They arrive, they stay a while, they leave. While they’re here they are convincing, and that’s the only power they have.
What we do is build on them. A thought comes, and we make a story out of it. Then we make a story about the story. We treat the thought as reality, and now we are not having a thought anymore; we are living inside something we constructed. It’s the same with emotions. The feeling would have moved through and gone, but we hold it in place by insisting it’s the truth about our life.
Being present with a difficult thought or a difficult emotion is not the same as being consumed by it. Present means we let it be there without adding to it. We don’t cling to it as reality.
And it helps to remember that it is fleeting, like everything else. You won’t be suffering forever. You won’t be anything forever.
The more present we are, the more regulated our nervous system becomes. The more regulated our nervous system, the more clearly we think, the more wisely we act, and the less we struggle against what is already true.
The Ordinary Made Sacred
Presence requires practice.
There are many ways to cultivate it, but they all have one thing in common: returning to the body.
When you’re washing the dishes, wash the dishes. Feel the water. Notice the temperature. Hear the sounds. Be with each movement instead of rushing toward the next thing.
Another way is to let the day interrupt you. Choose a sound that already happens without your involvement. A door in the building. The hum of traffic, the bird that shows up in the afternoon. You don’t schedule it, and you don’t control when it comes.
When it comes, stop whatever you are doing, and become immersed in it. Appreciate the sound. Find reverence in noticing the beauty of being alive in this work. Breathe.
Then go back to what you were doing, and notice whether anything has changed.
These are simple practices. Like any habit, they require consistency. We don’t become present once and stay there forever. We gently return, again and again, until presence becomes less of an exercise and more of a way of moving through the world.
If you’d like to begin practicing these ideas today, I’ve created a free guide, Four Ways Back, with simple presence practices you can return to throughout the day.
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