Are we loosing the ability to be present?

The light has turned red, and I slow down to stop. I turn to look at my youngest sitting in her car seat and see her staring out of the window in silence. I can see her eyes focused on the bus passing, the people walking on the streets, the cars slowing coming to a stop next to us. Just the soft noise of the radio presenter in the background. I nearly try to turn the volume up but then stop myself when I realise she’s silent but her mind probably isn’t. So instead, I keep quiet and watch her in the rearview mirror till the lights turn green pondering on her thoughts. I could ask her what she sees, but she’s not crying or complaining, which is what usually happens when sat in the car for a long time. Contrary to that, she’s perfectly happy sitting there and watching how the world works. There’s no reason for me to interrupt her thoughts. More than that she’s developing the ability to think without distractions. She’s focusing. Something I should be doing as the driver. The lights turn green, the car behind me impatiently honks and so I drive away.

It dawned on me in that moment how we eventually develop the need to multitask, which is great in certain circumstances, but it is not a skill that is always needed. I fear that the need to do too much at a time has overturned our ability to put our energy and creativity into the presence of either ourselves in a situation or a single task. I suddenly realised how I have maybe got too good at multitasking, that I’ve forgotten the skill in sitting and focusing on just one thing. Have I possibly lost the ability to be present in the same way my 2-year-old has managed to do in the car? Sitting at the traffic light, how many of us are able to just sit and watch our surroundings while waiting for the light to turn red, or how many of us grab our phones while we wait? I think we’ve become so good at distracting ourselves with how much we have to do or how much is happening, instead of just being present. Deeper than that, we've become so good at allowing ourselves to be distracted with fed thoughts more than being present with our own thoughts.

I’m brought back to cache 2 training where we were taught never to interrupt the child while playing. “Not even to help or advise her how to play with the toy?”, one person asked. “No”, the instructor replied, “let them develop their own thoughts and ways to do things”. This is advice I eventually carried back into my home with my own children – especially when I realised how overstimulating it must have been for my eldest to have to hear me tell him to do a task when he hadn’t even finished the previous task I had given him. He used to respond with a snappy “OKAY!” and I would say, “Don’t talk to me like that!” and then the mood would shift when I could have ideally waited for him to finish the first task and then told him what was needed next. More importantly if I had waited, he would be more inclined to do the first task properly without getting distracted with thoughts of what he had to do next. As adults, I think we also receive these same thoughts when our superior gives us too many tasks at once. I understand that better now.

Uninterrupted thoughts though lead to better concentration. I imagine it like those connect the dot books. The first thought is the first dot, which then leads to the second dot and the second thought and then it develops and as the thoughts (and dots) continue to develop, we suddenly see the full picture and the task is over. We feel happy at the progress and the result of the picture equivalates to our thoughts adding up. We feel satisfied that we’ve made sense of a thought. If we were continuously asked to do different things whilst trying to connect the dots, then we’d likely feel less motivated to finish what we started and less likely to develop the ability to think deeper. It is more likely we’d get sidetracked by whatever other task we’ve been asked to do. More than that though, once the picture is complete and we’ve connected the dots, we can colour it, we can build on it, we can create.

And so, while improvements were made improving my children’s focus and concentration, what about myself? Monkey see, monkey do. I also need to learn to be present and less overstimulated. Something incredibly hard as a mother and housewife. It continuously feels like your attention and hands are needed in two places at once. It is seemingly impossible to be present. This is something I am learning and developing every day. What works for the time being is to prioritise where my attention is needed the most. If they start to tell me a story, I’ve learnt not just to stay quiet but to interact and encourage them to tell me more. I may not see any relevance in their story, but they feel heard and safe which is more important. My interaction means I’m actively listening to their words. I’m interested, I’m here for you, I care about what you have to say. These are little changes required by myself to change so that I can be more present to their needs. The confidence that changes in their own self-esteem, because of my presence, is outstanding in my own eyes. That presence on my children has a domino effect on them because I then see how they interact with others similarly.

That same priority is the same with work or daily tasks where I find prioritising on which tasks need more attention than others is a helpful step forward. Not just completing the work but improving the quality. Just like the attention to detail in my child's story had a domino effect, the attention to detail in my work has

that same effect. So, while multi-tasking is a skill, I’m learning in this fast-paced life and world, that the ability to sit with one thought is a skill needed much more to improve our thoughts and creativity. Dare I say without that skill, we'd get too lost in this life.