It’s like this – this is how it goes

On my run Saturday morning I was listening to The Rich Roll podcast. Rich was interviewing Kelly Corrigan and she quotes the son of Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness.

She tells the story of a parental comedy of errors – toenails on the kitchen table followed by a brutal reminder of lost youth and on the edge of panic she finds peace in a simple phrase: “It’s like this.”

And at the end of my run, a good run, it started to rain.

It’s like this. This is it. If you’re waiting for something, living in the future, you’re missing it. Now is all that matters.

I’ve been working on mindfulness and while I’ve heard of Kabat-Zinn, I haven’t engaged with his work. It’s not dissimilar to the message of Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now.

What I have done is meditated most days for the past year and a half and exercised most days for the past 5 years.

From the literati to the street poet these messages seem to resonate. “Wherever you go, there you are”, “The past is history, the future is a mystery, today is a gift which is why they call it the present”, or in the words of The Reverend Run, “It’s like that, and that’s the way it is.”

So, this is it. It’s like this. Isn’t it wonderful?