Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Real Life | 19 July 2008

Living in the now

issue 19 July 2008

Have you ever attempted to open the front door to your house by pointing your car key at it? Please say you have. I did it twice this week and what is worse it took me ages to work out why the door was not opening, despite frantic clicking of the Peugeot key in the direction of the Yale lock. I shudder to think that a passing neighbour might have seen me.

The reason for my befuddlement, it turns out, is that whatever I happen to be doing, I am not there as I’m doing it. This is all to do with something fantastically new-fangled called ‘being present’. I hadn’t spotted it myself — as I refuse on principle to read books called The Power of Now. But a couple of friends have been instrumental in diagnosing the problem.

The first pulled me up sharp as I was sitting not listening to him tell me about something that happened to him at work that day.

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