Getting In Tune With The Present Moment

“Toys In The Attic.”

Aerosmith.

1975.

Going through some things in my home office, I stumbled across my old record collection. Good old fashioned vinyl LP’s. 100’s of them on a solid 2×4 and plywood cabinet I built many years ago to keep them dry and in good condition. Over the years the cabinet has been slowly covered with other stuff, the albums becoming very much out of sight and out of mind.

Music has always been an important part of my life, and back in the day vinyl was media of choice. Vinyl really wasn’t very portable, so for me to listen to the music it required me to also be less portable.

Back in the day we used to actual sit around and listen to music. Friends would gather and we’d bring our favorite albums and spend hours listening. Music was the focal point, not just something we had playing in the background as we did something else.

There was an intentionality and with that intentionality we sat fully present, just listening, discovering, and enjoying, listening fully in the moment.

Fast forward to the age of streaming. Of music seemingly everywhere on demand. Streaming has made music extremely portable, something you can take with you everywhere. As I thumbed through some of my favorite albums, I realized that streaming has changed my relationship with music. Even though I now have instant access to any song which pops into my head, listening has lost much of its intentionality. The intimacy is gone. The music has become something in the background as I do other things. I’m no longer fully in the moment.

I often feel relationships have also lost much of their intimacy. Like, they feel less intentional. In an ever-connected world, relationships are ever-accessible and yet they can often feel like background noise as we are busy doing other things, often at the expense of what really matters. Ever have to compete for a child’s attention when you’re talking with them with their phone in their hand? And it’s not just the kids. The battle to be fully present can be a struggle for me at times, and with the pace of life and the digital distractions I’m thinking I’m not the only one struggling.

It’s been said that the present moment is all we really have, yet how much of our present moment time is spent focused on trying to understand the moments we’ve had and trying to control the moments we’re going to have, at the expense of the present moment?

The present moment doesn’t care what we do with it.

Perhaps we should?

Photo by Skylar Sahakian on Unsplash