The Art of Being Present

Sometimes we don't realize we've been fully present until the moment has already passed.

I didn't set out to practice being present.

I simply walked outside to cut a handful of lavender.

Earlier that day, I had learned that I had been accepted to another fiber festival, and I wanted a small bouquet to place on the table beside me while I worked. It wasn't meant to become anything more than a quick trip into the garden.

Lately, I've noticed how often we talk about the importance of being present. It's become a familiar phrase in conversations about mental health and well-being, and for good reason. I've tried to practice it myself over the years, sometimes chasing it like someone trying to catch a faint memory or a child chasing a butterfly. The harder I reached for it, the more it seemed to flutter just beyond my fingertips.

But that afternoon, I wasn't trying.

I clipped a few stems of lavender. A bumblebee drifted lazily from one blossom of beebalm to the next. Jonathon was quietly deadheading flowers nearby. Oli made his usual rounds, happily greeting the neighbors as though it were the most important job in the world. The garden carried on exactly as it always had, asking nothing of me except to notice.

It wasn't until I had gone back inside that the thought found me.

Wait a moment...

I think I was actually present.

Not because I had reminded myself to be.

Not because I had practiced a technique.

Not because I had tried harder.

It happened because, for a few quiet minutes, I had stopped striving. I wasn't thinking about the next product to photograph, the next batch of wool to dye, or the next item on my to-do list. My attention rested entirely on what was close to me. The scent of lavender. The gentle hum of a bee. The warmth of the afternoon sun. The familiar rhythm of home.

Perhaps that is what presence has been trying to teach me all along.

It isn't another task to accomplish or another habit to perfect. It isn't something we force into existence through sheer determination. Like so many things in nature, it seems to arrive quietly when we create enough space for it to enter.

As makers, we spend so much of our time doing. We measure, plan, dye, spin, knit, weave, and create. There is deep joy in all of those things. But every now and then, the greatest gift isn't found in making something new. It's found in setting the work aside for a moment and allowing ourselves to simply be where we already are.

Maybe that's why the garden stayed with me that afternoon.

The lavender wasn't trying to become more fragrant.

The bee wasn't trying to become a better pollinator.

The flowers weren't striving to bloom more beautifully.

Everything simply was.

For a few precious moments, so was I.

Perhaps the art of being present isn't found in chasing the moment at all.

Perhaps it begins the moment we stop chasing and quietly notice that we've already arrived.