Visiting Isn’t the Same as Living There

You’re washing a plate and already at Monday’s meeting. Your hands are in the water, but your mind is in a room that doesn’t exist yet. Then yesterday’s words rise in your throat again, and you’re somewhere else, this time on the other side. Meanwhile, the plate is washing itself.

Imagine a horizontal line. Above it is the future: the meeting, the outcome of that visit, the message that hasn’t arrived yet. Below it is the past: the badly phrased remark, the opportunity you missed, the days that seemed better. In the middle is a point: where your feet and hands are, where the plate is. Life happens only there. Everything else is somewhere your mind visits with complete conviction.

You can visit the future and the past. You can’t live in them. Visiting is useful: you plan, remember, learn. Living there is something else. It means your body is in one place and you’re in another, and neither place truly welcomes you. Your body is left without you; the future doesn’t exist yet, and the past no longer exists. You spend hours in places where you can’t do anything and lose the only place where you can do everything.

The curious thing is that no one makes you leave. Your mind takes off on its own, out of habit and fear, so naturally that you don’t notice. By the time you do, you’re usually already halfway there. So the problem isn’t leaving. It’s not knowing you’ve left. A mind that wanders off and catches itself doing so is normal. A mind that wanders off without noticing is a day lived elsewhere.

Here’s something that changes how you see all this: the moment you realize you’re far away, you’ve already come back. You don’t have to make an effort to return, because noticing is already the return. There’s no need to push the thought away or create silence. Just tell yourself, without judgment, where you were. Then feel what’s in your hands: the water, the ceramic, the weight of the plate.

It’ll happen again in thirty seconds, and that’s okay. The practice isn’t about staying, because no one stays. It’s about coming back each time without making a big deal of having left. If you scold yourself every time you leave, you’ll end up leaving even more, because scolding is another trip into the past. If you simply come back, you learn to come and go lightly.

This isn’t about living in an eternally radiant present, which no one can manage. It’s about knowing where you are as you wander around. Visit the future and the past as you would a city, with your return ticket in your pocket. That ticket is your body, always here, always ready to welcome you.

One useful observation: your mind often takes off at predictable times. It happens at the sink, in the car, while you’re waiting, while the pot heats up. These are the moments when your hands know what to do and your mind feels free to wander off. If you recognize them, you can use them as reminders. Whenever your hands are working on autopilot, ask yourself where you are. Not to punish yourself, just to notice.