I’m Alive to the Moment — And So Are My Traps

Last updated on: July 7, 2015 at 12:01 am by Barbara Falconer Newhall

I’m Alive to the Moment — And So Are My Traps 2015-07-06T20:46:00-08:00 Barbara Falconer Newhall

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Bangkok. Photo by Barbara Newhall

The physical therapist contemplates my over stressed and overdeveloped trapezius muscles. Relax those muscles, she says. Let go of that anxiety. Be in the moment. Be here now. Do it, she urges.

Be alive to the moment. Modern psychology encourages this. Christianity and Judaism know about it. (“Be still and know that I am God.”) It’s what Edna St. Vincent Millay was thinking when she wrote “Renascence:”

God, I can push the grass apart, And lay my finger on Thy heart!

I’m not very good at being in the moment, even if — especially if — the moment is a nice one. If I’m having a good time, my mind tends to lurch into the future to the day when this loveliness will be no more. My thoughts sink into nostalgia and sadness at the knowledge that everything ends, especially, it seems, the really good stuff.

But — and here comes the big but — when I encounter something beautiful, I can’t seem to just sit there and be with it. For reasons I don’t understand (yet) I am greedy and grasping when it comes to beauty.

An exquisitely foggy day in the canyon behind my house? A star magnolia blossom battered by yesterday’s rain? Across the Bay in Marin county, a footpath cutting into the steep western flank of Mount Tamalpais? In Florence, the Last Judgement frescoed onto the interior of the Duomo? On a scorching, sun-pierced day in Bangkok, a Thai peddler offering me a hat?

Duomo, Florence. Photo by Barbara Newhall

In each instance, I feel I must do something about this wondrous event. Make it last. Make it mine. And so, like a lot of people, I get out the camera and take a picture.

What you see posted here, therefore, is the work of a greedy woman, a person who can’t get enough of that wonderful stuff, beauty. Right now, however, I’m not regretting my greed. As I upload these photos, one at a time, I notice myself lingering over them, studying them, savoring them. I lose myself t in the moment. My traps relax.

A version of this story first appeared on BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com, where Barbara riffs on life, family, books, writing, and her rocky spiritual journey. A journalist of many years on such publications as Good Housekeeping and the San Francisco Chronicle, Barbara’s newly released interfaith book is Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.

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