My latest “Aha!” moment arrived the other morning when I passed a neighbor/friend in the street.   If I had been paying attention, I would have noticed his body language: definitely down.   As we passed each other, he asked how I was, and I smiled and said “Great!”.   We moved on.  And suddenly it hit me,  like the proverbial ton of bricks, how insensitive and unconscious I had been – and have been on countless similar occasions.

In my mind’s eye, and in my psyche, I re-experienced what I hadn’t noticed in that moment.   Why that moment?   I suppose it could have been that the contrast between us gave me a little jolt  – and I’ve always been a bit slow to absorb a sudden idea – as if my brain needs to slow it down first, roll it around, look at it from all sides, before I really take it in.

When I ‘fearlessly analyzed’ this idea, I realized that it had been trying to get in for awhile.   Knocking at the door, so to speak.

The memory of this tiny event kept coming back – through other conversations, chores, outings, so I had to actually look this one square in the eye.  I had been insensitive and unconscious – definitely not ‘in the moment’.   When I passed him this morning, I stopped, looked and listened – to his voice, his body language, and his words.  It felt as if we really saw each other – a  ‘connect’.

It wasn’t time-consuming, or energy-zapping; in fact it was probably somewhat enriching, in some small way.  And I suspect these automated greetings are often the by-product of an excessively cerebral type such as myself.  We can be so pre-occupied with our ‘thinking and dreaming’ that we fail to experience the here-and-now.  The place where reality happens.