Boom
Is the Shock of Each New Instant
A
Selection from
the book How
to Achieve Peace of Mind...
Boom Is the Shock of Each New Instant
By
Jerry Dorsman
Boom is
the shock of each new instant that you realize you’re
still alive.
-Tennessee
Williams
In Tennessee
Williams’s play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, the
main character, a rich elderly woman named Sissy Goforth, is close to
death although she doesn't know it. She is busy writing her memoirs when
she is paid an uninvited visit from a man who says he knows her. She
learns that this man, over the past few years, was with many of her
friends when they died and he has become known in social circles as the
"Angel of Death." This gives her a start and she begins to
wonder if she might be the next to go.
What ensues,
however, appears to be a guided meditation with the "Angel of
Death" helping Sissy to live in the present moment. His favorite word
is boom. He says it every so often as if he wants the present
moment to explode. In one part, he describes boom as waves crashing on the
shore, each wave creating a new moment, a new boom.
Boom: each moment
explodes into possibility. Boom: life becomes fresh. Boom: death has not
happened yet. Death becomes a miniscule event in the faraway future. In
the play, Chris (the "angel") says, "Death is one moment,
and life is so many of them."
The message: Live
now. Seize the moment.
You can shock
yourself into living in the present moment. Contemplating your own death
is one way. Living dangerously is another. If you’re climbing on a
mountain face or jumping from an airplane, you’ll likely pay attention
to each specific moment. Certain rides at amusement parks can scare you
into embracing the present moment with all your vitality.
But what can you
do when you can’t startle yourself into living in the present moment?
You can pay attention. You can attend to the details of the moment. The
first way is powerful, the second way is subtle.
Try this:
Consider that you
have only one moment: this moment. If you miss it, you miss everything.
Now, here are two ways to keep your attention in the present moment...
1. The thought
of death. When people are dying, when they know they have only a few
months or a year left of life, they learn to live now. Very quickly, their
perspective changes. Each moment becomes precious. One meditation based on
this is to live this day as if it were your last. Live today as though you
will die tomorrow. It may even be true. You may die tomorrow or you may
die later today. Allow this possibility to change your perspective now.
2. Act
spontaneously. Your main purpose is to keep your attention on what you’re
doing in the present moment. So how can you remain totally attentive to
the moment. Act on impulse. Allow no thought to enter; think no thought
whatsoever. When you act, act instinctively from your true nature and when
you react, react instinctively to what’s happening around you. When with
others, show your heartfelt feelings without hesitation.
Consider for a
moment how you are when you become thoroughly involved in an activity. You
lose yourself in it. Two hours from when you began you realize that you
had been completely immersed. If you’re lucky enough to love your job,
this can happen at work. Often it will happen when you get involved with
your favorite hobby or a creative activity such as drawing or writing. It
can also happen when you’re meditating or when you’re doing in
physical exercise. How can you lose yourself in an activity? By paying
attention. You become so vigorously involved that you give the activity
your complete attention. In other words, you do nothing each moment but
act, or react. From now on, whenever time passes like this for you,
whenever you get so absorbed in an activity that you lose yourself in it,
take notice of what you’re doing. You can learn from it. You can apply
the same passionate attention to anything you do.
Here’s one
final idea from The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore:
"Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by
you so quick you hardly catch it going." Pay attention. Catch each
moment as it goes by.
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