Monday Musings: Presence, The Time Between

Hi Everyone,

Mediation teacher Davidji always signs off with the saying, 

“I’ll see you in the gap.”

He is referring to that moment between the in-breath, and the out-breath, when we are fully present. One of the skills in meditation is to focus on the breath, in and out. When you are done with one, and waiting for the next, there is nothing, nothing but presence. A divine moment, perhaps. Touching the Universe. That’s the idea. 

I’m often challenged by the difference between performing and waiting. I have learned, with much training, much living, how to get into the flow, into the zone, to let go and let be, to be present. At least some of the time. 

And often these moments are when something is happening. Playing a match, teaching a lesson, writing, watching a movie, talking to a friend, … we become one with what we are doing. Satori. We are “fully human, fully alive” (John Powell, SJ). 

Much of what I do at Orindawoods, is teach performance. Teach people, through tennis mostly, now to learn how to perform. To develop skills and be able to use them “when it matters.” 

The part that seems so challenging for me personally, is what about the times I’m not performing? I’m perhaps, waiting to perform. You know, all the time that isn’t labeled, “when it matters.” 

That is when it is hard to stay present, not “think ahead” to what is coming up. To go on a mental walkabout, to get really lost in some negative thinking about what can go wrong, or some fantasy about what could go right, neither very connected to anything that we would say is reality. Not to mention comforting. 

Or we can get caught thinking back, to past disasters. Or just plain thinking about all kinds of stuff other than what we are doing right now. We are in between “events.” We are “waiting.” 

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you see one more card

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart

The waiting is the hardest part

– Tom Petty.

When we have a big event, something that is very important to us, coming up, it can be hard to think about anything else. We get nervous, or edgy, and that is really uncomfortable. We want to escape the discomfort. And we make some pretty bad “deals with the devil” to do it. 

One strategy people use, is to pretend it isn’t very important. “I don’t really care about [ _____].”

Most of your friends or family can see right through this. Since you have probably been talking about this event constantly. Suddenly, this match, interview, test, first date, project doesn’t matter any more? 

Nice try, Sideshow Bob. 

As a strategy, this doesn’t usually work all that well. We are trying to kid the very person who has already told us that it is important. Ourselves. It’s actually kind of disrespectful to treat yourself like you are a dummy and would fall for such complete con as that. Thus you are further weakening yourself by attacking your self-esteem. 

In an important high school league match, I played a guy from Sonoma High School who, after losing the first set, and getting way behind in the second, just “gave up” because the tension was too much, too intense, too many people watching, too many teammates counting on him, it mattered too much, … and he was breaking down. He gave up. He even announced it out loud. Repeatedly. “That’s it, I’m done!” 

But he kept playing. Kept hitting balls. In fact, he relaxed, and played a lot better. Good enough to catch up to 5-5. He even said, “Look, I don’t even care, and I can beat you.” 

Nice guy. Not the model of sportsmanship, which was part of his technique. 

Truthfully, I was starting to be a bit worried, but kept playing and didn’t panic, or let him goad me into anything foolish. Fortunately, about 5-5, he realized he could win, started “caring” again, and I won the next two games easily, and the match, 6-2, 7-5. 

After the match, he put his cowboy hat back on, joked around with his buddies a bit, did his best to convince everyone that everything was OK, it was cool, and wandered off down the path back to school, into his own private memories, and no doubt, hell. That’s the problem with not caring, you really do care, and you can’t run away from it. And losing hurts, especially when you know you didn’t “try,” or give yourself a chance. 

A loser isn’t someone who loses. A loser is someone who thinks they can’t win. They have lost faith. And therefore sells themselves short, doesn’t even play, or tries to protect themselves when they do, and so never gives themselves a chance by putting it all on the line. 

We’ve probably all been there at some point. It’s part of life. And we try to hid it from everyone around as best we can, unless we are blues or country western singers. 

Don’t get upset

It’s gonna be alright

Because he’ll be staggering home to you

Before the night is through

So I guess. I could try

To take him from you

But don’t bother watching your back

Because I always lose

-- Lydia Loveless, Always Lose

Being nervous isn’t actually bad, though it can feel miserable. Being nervous just means you care. Nothing wrong with caring. You’re not going to get much of anywhere without caring. Without making an investment of time, energy, focus and heart. 

Of course, no one really enjoys a restless night, tossing and turning, before a big match. Or even jumping out of bed and throwing up. I used to feel sick every morning before teaching English. Intimidated by 12-year olds. Not pleasant. Not proud of that. 

But often, if you don’t let that restless attempt at sleep make you crazy (a big “if” – I know), the night before doesn’t really affect performance that much. That was then, this is now. 

If we are able to be present, we are present. The energy lost from one night’s sleep is insignificant in the amount of energy you have at your disposal. A focused person is a powerful person, no matter how much sleep they got. 

“The world gets out of the way of a [person] who knows where they are going”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

But that is about performing in the big “match.” Again, it is this moment in-between the “events” of life, which is most of life, I might add, that is challenging, and I want to get better at. 

And that is a good point, in terms of your life. There is much more time between the matches, dates and dances … the exciting times, than the times themselves. Yet we tend to emphasis certain moments and make them more important. 

I have memories of many of my high school tennis matches, for example, even though they were a small percentage of the time I spent at school, which has mostly been completely forgotten. Mrs. Sullivan’s math class, not a lot of memories there. Even less of English class or History. Then take college: I took four quarters of calculus, and don’t remember a thing. Other than having to get up early for class and walk across a deserted, yet quite windy, SLO campus. 

If the goal is to be fully human, fully alive, then I want each moment, each space in time to be wonderful, and fully lived. I don’t want to waste most of my life, waiting for something “important” to happen, … if it ever does. 

This moment, right here, right now (reading this musing), in terms of time, and the time I have, counts as much as another moment. 

Specifically, and especially, I want to stop wasting a lot of time worrying or anticipating some event. Getting nervous about an upcoming match, party, meeting or event. Not to mention, that 95% of what we worry about, never really happens anyway. 

How many of us are secretly, or not so secretly, sitting around, waiting for COVID-19? To get sick. That’s no way to live. And neither is pretending COVID-19 doesn’t exist. 

Life, living, is the answer. The only thing we can do right now. 

That is not to say that we don’t prepare. Preparing is being present. You don’t know exactly what is going to happen, but you know you need to be present to deal with whatever it is. 

Let’s take training. I’m working on my forehand return of serve, so that I can use it to my best advantage in the big match. I have a goal, but I’m fully engaged in practicing my shots right now. 

When that serve comes in practice, I’m not making or missing the return in the match, I’m making or missing the return in practice. I’m practicing the stroke itself, and I’m practicing being present, mediating the shot. I’m fully invested where I am. The here and now. It’s engaging, it’s challenging, it’s fun! 

If I can do it now, I can do it in the big match. If I can’t do it now, I certainly won’t do it in the big match. We play how we practice.  

So how do I make this moment important? Even if what is important is just “relaxing” or “having fun.” 

Of course, having fun, can just be another event, that you are sitting around waiting for. You can jam your day with events, to try to keep you present, but there is still space in-between. 

We do need to have “down-time”, when nothing is planned, but we are still present. Still enjoying ourselves. Do what we love, even it if is sitting under a tree, in a chase lounge, reading some trashy summer novel. 

I’m getting older but I’m not old yet

I’m already worried that I might forget

How to laugh, how to love

How to live, how to learn

I want to die with a smile when it comes my turn

-- David Myles, When It Comes My Turn

In fact, in tennis, most of the time on the court is in-between points, and not when the ball is in play. So even when you are playing that “big” match, you better have a way to manage the time between points. That time may be all about getting you ready to play the next point, but it is still something that you are doing right now, in the present moment. Whether it is celebrating the last point, catching your breath, prepared tactics for the next point, or visualizing where you will place the serve (the four stages of the in-between point mental game), you are still alive, still needing to live those moments. You don’t just fast-forward from one point to the next. There is 20-25 seconds of life in-between those 5-7 second you play the points. That’s a lot of living you don’t want to be ignoring.