Mile Marker 1: Becoming Aware

How to not wait until your life is over to realize you should have paid attention

“The great tragedy of human life is not so much in what they suffer, but rather, in what they miss.”  Thomas Carlyle

MINDFULNESS

This is the Exit 9 starting point: when we realize the most indelible, important moments in our lives tend to be the most inconsequential as we're living them.  Too frequently for most of us, this realization only comes in the rear view mirror.

Consider Emily Webb, the protagonist in Our Town—perennial favorite of community theatre and drama clubs across the country. One of the reasons this classic by Thornton Wilder has had such enduring success is because, with utter clarity and simplicity, it reminds us that no matter how satisfying our lives are, the precious moments too often go unrecognized.

Emily is a teenager who lives a normal life in a normal town. Nothing special. The whole play takes us through a typical day of “nothing special” punctuated only by her marriage to her next door neighbor, George Gibbs.  The third act takes us to her untimely funeral. There, she has the opportunity to revisit one day of her life before leaving it behind.

As the voyeur of her 16th birthday, she sees just how robotic she and her family were in their lack of attention to the minutia of their family routine, which Emily now understand is what truly mattered. In her iconic soliloquy she cries out:

I can’t.
I can’t go on. It goes so fast.
We don’t have time to look at one another.
I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life,
and we never noticed.

Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.
But first: Wait! One more look.
Good-by, Good-by, world.
Good-by, Grover’s Corners.
Mama and Papa.
Good-bye to clocks ticking.
And Mama’s sunflowers.
And food and coffee.
And new-ironed dresses and hot baths.
And sleeping and waking up.
Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

To which the Stage Manager tells her: “Saints and Poets. They do, some.”

JOY

If I want to learn from Emily, but I am neither saint nor poet, what can shake me out of a chronic reverie of gross inattention and realize how my wonderful life is—even when I’m standing at the check-out, or suffering fools at work?

This play resonates with me so much because I was in a high school production of Our Town. It came at a time when I was living out on an almost mystical level the lesson Emily so poignantly delivers. Thankfully, I didn’t have to die to trigger it—I just had to have a relatively rough childhood..

In our house when I was a child, there was an almost constant low-grade vibration of stress. My smart, artistic, sensitive dad was also an unpleasant and mean alcoholic. We could never have friends over. We didn’t know what state my father was going to be in at any given moment. My mother was too absorbed in catering, pleading and valiantly trying to hold things together to fully care for us.

But that changed when she divorced him and wound up marrying a man who didn’t do anything to brag about.. except this: he went to work in the morning. He came home at 5:15. We went on weekend jaunts as a family. He made us laugh.  We were living that Our Town life of “nothing special” but the difference between me and Emily was, I was 16 years old and I was realizing it.  The blinders of fear and anxiety had been removed, and for a while, I saw daily life as a kaleidoscope in living color.  

At that time, I wrote in my diary: “I am filled to the brim with (I don’t know how to describe it) extreme happiness. I have never seen so much beauty as I do now in this simple situation. Everything is perfect. As I was reading by the window, I was paying equal attention to the sun. Suddenly a big black cloud hid the sun and it poured. Thunder pealed and hailstones bounced off my screen. That was an hour ago. Now the rays of the sun are abundantly overflowing on the lilacs and freshly-washed leafy trees. I love this new type of weather because it gives me a chance to appreciate all of God’s gifts of nature at once. Words cannot describe the beauty I see from my chair tonight. There are no words to tell you the happiness I feel in my soul. My heart cries out in thanks to God for bestowing me with so many rare and wonderful gifts. Tonight, indeed, I am the luckiest person alive!”

I wish I could say my accelerator pedal stuck in that state of grace forever, but of course, it did not. And it never will. But, like Hellen Keller summoning up the word for “water” from deep in her subconscious,  I learned that the muscle memory for joy is always there. But I’ve also learned  that it takes consistent practice to stay aware and attentive and grateful in order to call it up.

Think about a pure moment of joy that you have experienced?  What was that feeling like? What triggered it? Describe it in detail—either in the comments, or in a journal or even on a scrap piece of paper.

STILLNESS

One critical way to clear the decks for presence and joy is to buffer the internal and external noise.

Richard Rohr tells the story of theologian Howard Thurman, who, as a seminary student, “was walking home late one night, when he noticed the sound of water. He had taken this route many times, and he had never heard even a drip. The next day Thurman discussed his observations with one of his professors, who told him that a canal ran underneath the street. Because the noises of streetcars, automobiles, and passersby were absent late at night, Howard could discern the sound of water.”¹

So, what does this have to do with our Exit 9 journey?  If we can break out of autopilot and be quiet—eliminate the internal chatter and the external noise-- if we can tap into the joy that we know is waiting to be tapped, we will be more in touch with our inner selves to discover where we truly belong:

***We can listen to what Howard Thurman calls the Sound of the Genuine***

In a Spelman College speech in 1980, he told the graduates,

There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born…

You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. ²

To cut those strings and listen for the sound of the genuine, practice:

THE FOUR PILLARS OF PRESENCE

Solitude means not just being physically alone—it means turning off phones, TVs, computers, Alexa, and of course social media. Have a news fast. Commit to turning off your screens at a certain time every day. Go for walks without earbuds. Sit. See. Hear. Notice. Strengthen your sensory muscles.

Mindfulness a core practice for paying attention. There are many, many books on mindfulness. My favorite mindfulness mentor is Thich Nhat Hanh, but there are so many. Go to the library or look online for recommendations and find one that resonates with you.

Gratitude: Be grateful for it all—for the simplest things, the grandest things, the things that make you happy, the things that bring you down. If you can detach yourself from expectations of the future and release yourself from the past regrets, it is easier to be grateful for whatever comes your way.

Journaling: Throw it all down on paper: Throw down your feelings. Journal-writing is also a mindfulness practice. No one will read it, so just write with abandon. You’ve heard of brain dumps? Writing in a journal is basically a heart-dump. The less you think the better.

TODAY

So today I find myself with something in common with Emily Webb: today is my birthday. Unlike her, I am far from 16 years old, but what’s more important, I will try to be 100% present for it, as I move through the day with mindfulness and gratitude.

I’d like to ask you to pick one of the 4 pillars above and spend only 10 minutes practicing it today, and let me know that you did it in either a comment or a DM—that would be such an awesome birthday gift for me!

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And also, this is a reminder that this site is for me to workshop ideas, and play around, and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Please help me with that! I need your feedback! Remember that this site is my sketchpad for a book. I don’t expect it to be perfect, but I’d like to make it more perfect! What resonates? What doesn’t? Did a forget a comma? Did I spell something wrong? Is it too much “about me”? Did you get anything from this post? If yes, what was your takeaway? If not, what was it missing? What would you have liked to hear more about? Thank you!

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Recommended reading and references

Awareness, the Perils and Opportunities in Reality, Anthony de Mello, S.J.

The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy

This is Water, David Foster Wallace

Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday

1. Richard Rohr, OHM, “Everyday Mysticism: Alive for a Reason” Center for Action and Contemplation, March 20, 2024 https://cac.org/daily-meditations/alive-for-a-reason/

2. Howard Thurman, “The Sound of the Genuine” reprinted in The Daily Good November 30, 2017. https://www.dailygood.org/story/1846/the-sound-of-the-genuine-howard-thurman/