Using Mindfulness to Create Polaroids in Your Mind: Making Moments Count

There they are. My grandparents holding hands standing side by side under a rusted metal porch awning atop a steep driveway. His arm is around her back. He is wearing a white t-shirt, suspenders, and blue slacks. She is a foot shorter and much thinner than his large frame which was hardened from years of working in a mill and as a mechanic. She is wearing a blue cotton shirt, jeans, and her tennis shoes. They each wave goodbye as my father backs down their driveway, my grandmother air blowing me a kiss. I can see the gentleness in the eyes of my larger than life grandfather and the love in my grandmothers wave. This moment, iconic in my own mind, seems like yesterday. Not like the more than eighteen years that it has been. It was a Polaroid moment; a moment that I can call upon at will on days like the day of my wedding when I missed them both so much that I ached or the days that my sons were born when I was sure that they would both be smitten by tiny handsome babies that we welcomed into our family. That moment was my first honest attempt as a young teenager at mindfulness. This was before I even knew what the concept of mindfulness was.

I remember sitting in the passenger seat of my fathers white station wagon thinking about how much I wanted to always remember them at that exact moment. I loved them and for some divine reason I realized at that exact moment that they would not be together, or with me, forever. Less than six months later, he died. Fast forward almost two decades, a military career, marriage, motherhood, and my passion of being a therapist later, and I spend my days practicing and teaching mindfulness. In a world full of chaos and problems, I still try to take Polaroids in my mind of the ordinary and beautiful moments that life brings. Each time that my husband deployed with the military, I would take our last kiss and store it in the front of my memory bank alongside his smell, his touch, and the feeling of being secure when I am next to him. During the moments when my children smile and giggle, or climb into my lap, I take a living picture in my mind.

This practice may sound dramatic or overly simplified to some, but for me it has meant resilience and gratitude. The deliberate photo album that I have created sustains me on my bad days and chases away loneliness when I want to throw in the towel. Today, we know more about the mind/body connection than ever before. Mental health practitioners such as Dan Siegel and Bessel Van der Kolk have published amazing texts on the power and use of mindfulness to heal a person, a whole person. By being present in a moment, we can engage that very same moment with all of our senses taking it all in. Breathing, seeing, hearing, feeling, and tasting the moment makes it stick in our neural network. The moment becomes retrievable.

So whats the point you might ask? Next time you find yourself feeling as if you are going through the motions of life missing all of the moments that make up your day, consider really focusing in on a moment. It can be ordinary or life altering (although I have found many of these moments to be one and the same), private or shared, or random. When you really engage the moment, you might be surprised just how much you miss day to day just trying to get by. The moments that I have stored, and continue to store, have made me more grateful, more resilient, and more prepared for the transitions that await me in the future.

In the not so distant future my children will be grown and leave, my parents will continue to age and die, our home will become too much to handle and need to be downsized, and I may find myself without the love of my life. I know, this sounds dramatic and maybe even depressing. However, this is the reality of life. We are born, we grow, we thrive, and then we decline. When those times of decline in my life come, I hope to be able to reach back, pull up a picture and breath in those stored moments. This way, just for a little while, I can remember the thoughts and feelings that defined my life and choose gratitude and mindfulness when there seems like there is very little purpose left. I can remember that life if more about the moments than the achievements, more about the relationships than the race. This is no great scientific work, but rather a lesson learned that I hope someone else can use. Be mindful. Be present. Be resilient. Be prepared for whatever the future holds.