#blog

There's a particular flavour of joy that I hope to describe so that others might experience it too. When I'm present, my brain primes me with all kinds of potentials, quests and reminders. Examples include:

• Potentials (ie in conversation). I'm having a great conversation with someone, and my brain feels alive with all the connections it triggers within itself. There are multiple paths for where the conversation might go next - where I can take it with my response - including paths I was unaware of (a wonderful surprise).
• Quests. I meet someone who recommends me a festival, a farm worktrade, or offers me their place to stay. It feels like a new side quest has been added to my life that I can choose to explore.
• Reminders. I'm taking a moment to focus on my breath as I leave the house for work, and I suddenly remember I've forgotten my keys inside.

When any of these things happen, I feel an exceptional gratitude and "buzz". They have slightly different flavours, but they all stem from being present - a state of mind that I (and many others) struggle to experience. Given the role-playing games (RPGs) of my upbringing (like Dungeons and Dragons, The Legend of Zelda, and now Disco Elysium), it's easy to feel like the more present I am, the more my life feels like an RPG of its own:

• Conversations and interactions with others are a path chosen (wittingly or not) through infinitely branching choices. The options for what you can say or do as you trace a path through these "dialogue trees" are limited by the basic statistics of your character (like your intelligence within certain subjects or your empathy for others), and not all of them are likely to work. But ultimately, you can't be fully aware of these options if you're busy worrying about what to say next or how to impress someone. The options are something you feel and react to in the moment, not something you can slowly and deliberately choose.
• The quests offered to you depend on who you know and how you engage with them. You can find a lot of quests on the vast internet these days, but there are so many opportunities that only open to you by connecting with others in real life - and only if you're present enough to realise they're there.
• Your brain is trying to remind and prompt you all the time, but you won't notice it if you're not present. Perhaps you've got an idea for a vlog or a song you'd like to create; your everyday experiences will likely remind you of important things (like my forgotten keys) and your most compelling creative ideas, but you won't notice them if your mind is too busy thinking about other stuff.

My ultimate point is this: there is a joy available nearly all the time in life which is only available to the extent that you're present. This is why one of my core values is "Presence is the ultimate gift to every person, including myself"; it just makes life feel like crack.

Many people think of mindfulness in its relation to mental health; concentrating on breathing slowly reduces my stress and "triggers my rest and digest response" or the "parasympathetic nervous system". But this is overly reductive, and narrowly focusing on the emotional regulation that can come from mindfulness takes the spotlight off the even bigger benefits; presence, and the life changes that come with it.

Manifestation kinda works, but presence does all the work

Manifestation involves setting goals and trying to will them into existence by regularly thinking about them (ie with mantra). There's good reason to be skeptical of manifesting, but I believe manifestation has some merit for certain goals.

Priming in psychology is embedded the idea that if you read the word "fuck", and shortly after read "_u_k", you're more likely to think of the word "fuck" again than the word "duck" or "luck". Generally, it's the idea that if you experience X now and Y later, your experience of Y is dependent on X. Exactly how priming works and what it can do (ie can you influence someone's behaviour with priming) is still a debated topic, but I feel that it has some merit.

Manifesting involves priming yourself with goals; you might make a mood-board that includes you playing guitar at an open-mic night. If you regularly remind yourself that you want to play at open-mic night, at a party you might be more inclined to ask someone about music which may lead you to practice jamming with others or take guitar lessons. You can of course, use the internet to book some guitar lessons, but you can't necessarily use it to find that particular person's jam group. The latter opportunity was always available, but your capacity to become aware of it hinges on you priming yourself to look for performance opportunities and going to the party.

My key point here is if you're at the party worrying about who to talk to, then you will likely not consciously remember your goal to play guitar, nor will you notice your subconscious whispering "hey, that person is playing with a guitar, we like guitars". Being present is a necessary ingredient to detect this quest while you're walking around the party, or from within a conversation's dialogue tree.