Being Present

I love watching Magnus Midtbø , I came across his old video where he do free solo climb with Alex Honnold the guy who free solo El Capitan a vertical rock with 914 meter height in Yosemite National Park.

A free solo basically when people do rock climbing without the assistance of ropes, harnesses, or other safety equipment to stop a fall. In the middle of the video magnus said that it feels like its only 30 seconds ago he at the bottom when actually they are already 30 minutes deep into climbing the rock, alex said “that its one of the thing when you do free solo you just become fully present, its not many things in life that makes you fully present”, i think thats the beauty in doing activity so dangerous like free solo, you just become fully present, all you think about is the moment right here and right now only, and when magnus feels like he is over thinking his next steps, alex said “don’t think about the move far away or in the past, just think about next easy move” its beatiful sentences and i think it can be applied to many things in life or pretty much everything in life.

We live in an age where a lot of people including me cant reamin in the present moment, we too busy thinking about the future or the past, whats the benefit from thinking that things? i do know there is some benefit to some extent, but i dont think the number of benefit outnumber the harm that it caused, when we think too much about the past or the future i think it often just makes us feeling down, even though im sure there are many beautiful moment that happen right in front of us but we dont realize it because we too busy to think about something that already happen or never gonna happen.

For the last a couple of years i’ve been trying to become more present with doing activities, like i started reading book because it forces you to sit down and do nothing and just you and the book, its been pretty fun honestly like i remember when i and my team doing research for our thesis, we have to be in the room next to the sheep pen because we have to guard and watch the sheep pretty much all day for 150 days. We sharing the schedule with others like each group has to watch the sheep for 8 hours and it was a long time, and when its my group to watch the sheep i just reading a lot like i think i managed to complete 2 books, 1984 and the alchemist, and i really enjoy my times reading especially 1984 great book by the way. The thing is whenever i opened the books time just went by, the 8 hours shift just flew away like that and i just being fully present with my time, i dont think anything else beside the books im reading in my hands, that is a good feeling to experience because at this day i dont think many activities that gonna make you being present like that.

Beside reading i have one more activities that i enjoyed so much this past few months, its swimming. I like swimming when i was a child, like i really do a lot of swimming when i was a child, but growing up i just dont do it much because i think it takes a lot of effort lol, but this past few months im going to this gym and in the same area they have a swimming pool, so i just decided to swim every friday and man, it takes me back to how i remember how much i love swimming, its maybe my favorite activity right now, i can spend 1 to 2 hour session to swim, and its so fun and refreshing, because its like reading its one of the things that just let you being present in the moment, i dont think anything else when i swim because i already had a hard time to manage my breath under water, i just think about my next breath while i’m above the water.

Until now i am still trying to stay in the present for most of the times, but its been a hard journey i say to keep in the present because there just so much distraction in this internet day and its kinda hard to stay in the present when everything around us trying to forces us to consume things we don’t want, and yeah thats a hard battle to win but i’ll take a single step every day to win even a small things.