August 12 2025
Presence
One of the unassailable truths of life is that life itself is a classroom of unending lessons. Right from the moment, as a tiny baby, you enter this world and its airy environment, you are forced to take air into your lungs. You have to learn to cry right away, learn to breathe, so you may not die, and so it begins.
No matter the situation, everything around you, from birth to death, is trying to teach you something valuable. Starting from your parents, to your siblings, if you have any, your neighbours, your early friends in school, your community, your religious community, your intimate relationships, those friends who aren’t friends and those enemies who aren’t enemies. Everyone and everything is always presenting situations, circumstances and lessons.
Now, whether you will consider the situation and circumstances you find yourself in as something to complain about, something to rejoice in, or most of all, something you can learn from, will depend on your own personal perspective.
Every human being is equipped with the free will to choose and pick how they navigate this world. How they navigate this complex web of important and unimportant relationships. Sometimes, you will fly right, sometimes, you will get lost, sometimes, you get it so wrong that it could threaten your life itself. Decisions always lead to destinations. Non-decisions too.
As they say, there is no cloud without a silver lining. Meaning there is a blessing in every disappointment, you just need to be able to perceive it. Learn instead of losing.
We might agree that life’s lessons are meant to help us become better human beings. A lesson learned is a mistake not to be repeated. It is a recollection of the pain that was had, and in preventing a repeat of said pain, we take an alternate course of action that prevents a similar mistake. We are present enough to recognize the pattern. Presence!
Let’s take an example of a school classroom. The primary objective of a classroom is to provide a conducive atmosphere for learning. A child in class might be super attentive. An eager learner, avid reader, learning and gleeful. Another child may be distracted. Perhaps this child is hungry and often comes to school without breakfast, which makes learning a lot more difficult. Yet another child might be unconcerned, and would rather snicker, gossip, and prank away with their similarly unconcerned friends.
A single classroom, different worlds. In every single situation in the little illustration above, despite the various background conditioning, the choice to do as you please always remains. Our immediate environment, circumstance and upbringing have a direct impact on how we navigate our lives, even though we still have the free will to direct that navigation as we please.
While all the kids in our illustrative classroom are present, not all of them are present in the moment.
The learning opportunities are being grabbed by some, the same opportunity is flying by, unnoticed by others. While some children are learning, others aren’t. While some students pass their exams, others won’t. And while some children will move on to higher classes, some will stay behind. On and on are the results of immediate environment, circumstances, upbringing and our decisions and indecisions.
The great variety of circumstances we all come from, while it has a direct impact on how we all experience the same classroom, cannot be solely blamed for our outcomes, because guess what? We have a free will to decide how to navigate. Yes, some might have it easier than others, but everyone has the same ability to decide how to act. Some people carry heavier burdens than others, but within those burdens, choice still exists.
A hungry child, for instance, is not disposed to learning properly because a hungry belly certainly does not aid learning. While a child is likely powerless against the hunger situation and has limited options, an adult in a similar situation has a few more choices. They could simply continue to blame their circumstances for their current situation, which is one choice, or they could decide to not let those circumstances dictate how they act, which is another choice, both of which are equally available to this adult.
One choice: blame your circumstances
The other choice: Act right despite your circumstances.
The children’s classroom above is very much like life. As an adult navigating through life, we may be super attentive like the eager student, taking advantage of the many lessons and opportunities that life is throwing our way, or we may be distracted for many reasons and both the learning and opportunities pass us by because we are absent, preferring to blame our circumstances or blame others.
As time is a constant, life will continue to trudge on. Some will grow, some will stagnate, and some will decline. And the only difference? How we choose to act in the moment.
So when we miss opportunities that could propel us forward, or learn lessons much later than we should, then it is most likely that we have been absent in our own lives too, or more accurately, not present in the moment, being the man or woman that the moment deserves.
Presence of mind, being present in your own life at every moment, is something that every successful human being must acquire. Indeed it is a prerequisite for success and it has its roots in self-awareness.
It is easier for some people and pretty difficult for others. In any case, it is earned. You don’t just simply ‘have’ it, you work at it to achieve it. And it shows up in different ways, in small things and in great things.
A class bully for instance, is unable to reprimand himself. This is likely because he is never reprimanded at home. He has little or no reference point for what reprimanding looks like. Hence, there are no limits to the mischief he would get to, first on inanimate objects and things around the household, next on his classmates.
If he were able to reprimand himself, for instance, he would say to himself something of this nature after being bad: Oh, I should not have done that. I should not have hit him. He really didn’t do anything to me and I should not take advantage of him like that.
This is the beginning of self-awareness and becoming present in his own life. His conscience is active enough to call himself to order. And when next an opportunity to take advantage of a classmate arises, if he was earnest in his reprimanding of himself, he would redirect his actions onto a different path. Indeed, he could even become a protector of the classmates who are being bullied.
This ability to reprimand oneself, to self-introspect about one’s actions, is how one becomes present in one’s life. To actively re-examine one’s actions and lay it bare in the light and call a spade a spade! Simple activity but yet very hard, because the human ego is involved.
The reward of this self-introspection is clarity! Our class bully would say: I used to be a bully, but now I am no more a bully.
The opposite of this self-introspection is to arrive at more confusion. You will defend your bad actions, you will justify your bad actions, you will lie to yourself. I bullied him because he could not stand up for himself, he was weak, he was ugly etc etc. You will live out this lie, missing out on growth, missing out on opportunities, stagnating and declining! The opposite of success.
And with clarity comes a clearer conscience. There is no confusion as to what is right and what is wrong since you are not defending or justifying your bad actions. Clarity of mind and thought puts you in a better position to recognise opportunities as they approach. And as you know, opportunities don’t linger forever. They knock quietly for those who are attentive and present.
Life is always speaking. Presence is what lets you hear it!
