I woke up this morning and remembered it snowed.

It’s beautiful and it’s white and it’s light—a dusting—so there’s not a lot, but it’s there and it’s beautiful.

When I first saw it snowing yesterday, I was shocked. We haven’t had snow in months it feels like. Also, because I’ve been lusting over sun and warmth and a summer breeze. Spring flowers. Going outside without jackets. Walking and running with tank tops and early morning daylight. I’ve been dreaming of warmer, sunnier days.

I’ve been thinking and saying, as I’ve thought and said over the years, that, “As I get older, I long for the sun and the heat and the warmth.”

But it snowed and it’s beautiful and my heart feels so light. Childlike. Playful. Happy. Present.

I feel such deep appreciation for being here now. For this. For the beauty. For the snow. For the walk I just went on, outside, in this, surrounded by this.

It’s too easy to get caught up in what we want, in where we want to go—in the desires that pull and tug from inside. In the mind that thinks and moves and bounces around.

Our desires, too, are real. They’re where we want to go, what we want to do; they come from within us also.

Those desires are real.

But so is this. This, right here, right now is beautiful.

It occurred to me this morning that I recognize the energy—this energy of desire. The pull, the warm pull, of the desire. I’ve felt it all throughout life. This desire inside and the desire that resides in my mind. Nothing has changed over time. I still desire. My mind still longs.

Our minds will always want and desire and long.

Even our souls long for things—there are things we’re meant to do and feel and experience.

But this present moment is exquisite. If we can allow ourselves to soften and sink into it. Feel it. Allow it to arise and fill us. If we can dissolve into it and be with it and feel it completely.

I still have to practice bringing myself into the present moment, allowing the present moment to envelop me and open up for me. Allowing its fullness to flower in and around me.

It’s a function of the mind to move and be restless and to want—to want to be anywhere but here. To be thinking of the future or lost in the past or totally consumed in some thought process or dream or inner world.

But to be present is soft, it’s gentle, it’s peaceful. Well, not always, but this, today was. It can be.

The present is ever-present. It’s always here. For us. To feel. To breathe. To experience. To be with.

This feels like a lesson for me, learning to be fully present, live in presence. So much of it is still so conscious for me—reminding myself to come back, to breathe, to look around me, to feel and hear and experience the world that is unfolding within and around me as it’s unfolding, as it’s happening.

I want to be present, here, with me. With this moment. With each of my present moments.

I am okay that it’s still a practice, though I’ve been practicing for over a decade. Really, I don’t have a choice anyway. It is what it is. Though, I do also wish I could just live and reside in this place, in this present-moment space, always.

Life, I think for most of us, is a balance. To understand the nature of our minds, to get to know our minds, how they think, how they move, how they operate. The things that trigger them. The things that they want and desire. The kinds of thoughts that move through them and when. To watch them, to get to know them, to get familiar and acquainted with them.

To desire and long for and work toward what we want to achieve.

And, also, to rest and to breathe and be. To be able to watch that activity-seeking, moving mind yet reside in a space outside of it. To be able to watch it, while breathing in this grounded, present space.

And to also know that even our hearts and our souls desire—that there are things we are here to experience and see and do and learn. And it’s okay. It’s also okay to desire. It’s natural to desire.

But maybe we can live in a way where we live with and alongside that energy. Moving with it, conscious of it, but also grounded in a softer, tender knowing of the present. An intimate knowing of the present. Feeling and living and breathing, conscious of the present.

Maybe we can always come back and breathe and allow ourselves to be and feel and appreciate what’s happening right now. Here, now, in this moment. Our current moment.

Maybe it can be our grounding place. Our landing place. The space we return to.

I want to live my life while I’m living it, experience my experiences while they’re being experienced, while they’re happening.

I want to breathe into the present, soften into it, allow it to move in and through me completely.

I want to dissolve in its essence.

Be with it, fully in it.

I don’t want to live forever in my mind—so lost in thoughts and desire and activity that I miss out on what’s happening right here and right now.

Though I know the nature of the mind is to be restless and to move, that it’s natural—and will happen.

This is a practice; it’s also an allowing.

I want to live soulfully present in this moment, in all of my present moments.

Right here, right now.

In this moment.

I just went on a walk in the snow.

And it was exquisite.

And also filled with moments where my mind wandered and worried and wondered and got lost in thought.

And that’s life.

It’s okay.

It is what it is.

For now.

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