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Is It Always Best To "Be Here" Now?

by — Last updated: 2013-05-29 in Emotional & Stress Management

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"Blessed are the pure in heart," Jesus is said to have told the crowds at the Sea of Galilee. Some modern translators restate this beatitude as "Blessed is the one-track mind." Sometimes a one-track mind is just what you need to find happiness in life.

Nearly all of us have heard the injuction to live our lives mindfully, to "be here" now, because the present is the only moment we really have. On the other hand, maybe what we believe to be a uniquely human ability to project our minds to other places makes our lives more pleasant even when can't change the physical constraints in front of us, allowing us to escape depressing realities to let our minds float to a happy place.

Killingsworth found that mind-wandering actually didn't increase happiness, even in unpleasant circumstances.

Comparing consecutive reports of happiness, Killingsworth found that reports of mind-wandering tended to precede reports of unhappiness, but reports of unhappiness did not precede reports of mind-wandering (on average).

People aren't just less happy when their minds are wandering, no matter what they are doing. Killingsworth theorizes that most of the time when our minds wander, we rehash unpleasant experiences or we rehearse our justified or irrational fears about our lives or we indulge in fearful anticipation of future problems. Even when we let our minds float to that happy place, we are still slightly less happy than we are immersed in the present moment. If mind wandering were a slot machine, Killingsworth says, it would be like having a change to lose $50, $20, or $1. You'd never want to play.

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So How Can We Make a Habit of Being in the Present?

Buddhist philosophy teaches that "delusion" is the cause of greed and hatred, and "mindfulness" is its antidote.

The term for the kind of "delusion" mentioned in the philosophy literally translates as "memory," but this is more than just a memory of the past. In Buddhist philosophy, delusion is anything that takes away from awareness of the present moment. 

The antidote for the novice is meditation, usually focus on the breath, which shoves out other moments in other places to ground the practitioner in the here and now.

That's all very well and good, many of us might say, but you really can't chant and meditate while driving the kids to their soccer game. However, you can still take a moment, with eyes still open, to focus on the breath.

  • When beginning a new activity, take a deep breath.
  • When in the middle of an ongoing activity, take a deep breath. (If you are in the middle of a conversation, however, you may not want to utter a sigh.)
When you are forced to pause in the middle of an activity, such as waiting at a red light or waiting for the train to reach your platform, take a deep breath, or maybe two.

What does deep breathing do for us?

It's not a panacea, but taking breath slowly and letting it out even more slowly activates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the nerve in our neck, chest, and gut that tells us when things are OK, when it's safe to be social, when there is no need to worry. 

Taking just a breath or two won't send you to a mental nirvana in which you might be dangerously out of touch with the real world. And it's important to understand that this exercise is physical, not mental. You don't want to send your mind anywhere other than to the here and now. But taking just a moment to live in the present helps your physiology to ground you in the present so you are more focused, more productive, safer, and happier.

  • Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. 2010 Nov 12. 330(6006):932. doi: 10.1126/science.1192439.
  • Wortham, J. If You're Happy and You Know It, Tell Your Phone. New York Times, 29 July 2009.