The context of now is bringing my attention again and again to a moment 11 years ago. The week after I was diagnosed with cancer, my whole experience of my life shifted. The past became an unbearable memory of Eden in the days before the danger. The future became obscured by thick charcoal fog. My mind, so often seduced by future and past, couldn’t rest in either of those places and bounced around like a trapped sparrow beating herself against the window. And sometimes, I could find a moment to rest in the only real thing we ever have. The present.

The present was a time without surgery, without chemo. In the present I was alive and not sick. I fell in love with the hair I was about to lose and about which I had complained in the past. I fell in love with the beauty of every sunset (of course) but also every rainy and windy day, every time I was too hot or too cold, because Hey, I was alive! Everything ordinary became extraordinary—the taste of my morning coffee, the sound of the kids bickering in the garden, the dog pushing his cold wet nose into my sleeping ear before I was ready to wake up.

Of course, the present moment had its miseries. Doctors appointments. Scans. Waiting for test results. I was in the period before the new horror was fully upon me but after I could ignore the danger that was growing in my body. I spent plenty of time weeping under the covers, but I was shocked that what bloomed in me was the most profound gratitude I had ever felt. I was describing this to a friend one afternoon and he told me, “I love the learning but hate the teacher.” Yep. But sometimes maybe the learning isn’t available without a tough teacher.

Right now, the world is filled with tough teachers. Wars. Floods. Famine. Polarization. Hatred. Fear fear fear fear. My new book—officially out last week—is called by its original name, Changing on the Job, but the subtitle is updated for now: How leaders become courageous, wise and steady in an anxious world.  Months ago, I thought releasing it less than a week after the US election would be particularly bad timing—who is going to be interested in a book in a time like this? But now here we are, and maybe this is the perfect time. Maybe this book is a balm for this moment.

This book basically asks, What if all of life’s challenges were here to grow us? The personal miseries like cancer and layoffs and the unexpected breakdown of a relationship. The global miseries like the climate crisis, war, and the falling apart of our most cherished institutions. What if they were meant to do two things: Help us fall in love with the present moment and help us grow to handle the greater difficulties ahead?

I believe each of these relies on what adult developmentalists call the “subject-object shift” which is basically just being able to see something that you were enmeshed with before. You know, like when you just act out of a belief your father handed down to you that you should put your game face on and not talk about what is really going on inside you. You’re subject to that—you can’t help that you follow that belief because it’s part of the silent coding inside you. And then one day you see that that’s what you’re doing, and you see that it has consequences, and you see that it’s not even your own belief in the first place! Now that belief has become an object of your reflection and you can decide when to put your game face on and when to actually show people what’s going on inside you. That’s the power of the subject-object shift. Seeing something gives you choice about what to do about it.

Cherishing the present takes a subject-object shift. The unbelievable privilege to get up in the morning and have food on the table and clean clothes to wear—most of our ancestors couldn’t count on that. Much of the world right now doesn’t reliably have that. But most of us reading this blog have it so often that it becomes invisible—we become blind to it, subject to it. Once that becomes a miracle for our appreciation, we really see it again. This moment calls on us to make an object of our gratitude, to remember to be amazed by what we have now.

Sometimes our amazement is made an object of our awareness by our fears. But we can have a practice of not being subject to our fears (where they’re in charge of us) but rather we can notice what our fears are illuminating and decide what to do about that. Terrified of what happens to the climate? We can be grateful for every moment we have fresh water to drink, clean air to breathe, and healthy food to eat. Our fear of what we might lose can help us understand and be grateful for what we have. (And encourage us to action, but that’s not for today.)

So today, let’s practice this form of noticing as a way of being inside this present moment in a new way. This gives us part of my book’s new subtitle (about being courageous, wise, and steady in an anxious world). Many wisdom traditions teach us to be in the present moment, to look around with wonder. Our anchor to the present keeps us steady even in the storm.

The second (and I’m hoping final) time I had cancer, I fell in love with the quiet of dawn.  Every dawn was different, reminding me of the promise of this moment that was unfolding now, that had never unfolded before, that was necessarily new. I know you know this. I knew it too. But to practice this knowing, to practice the deep gratitude that we are alive in this amazing—fraught, difficult, uncertain, and yet still amazing—moment. That might change your life, and it might give you the calm you need to weather the storms of our time. And even more, it might give you the strength to be a part of what is called of us now, to remake a better world.

PS  I know that it’s not enough to talk about presence without action. That’s my next blog. Until then, let’s practice presence as fundamental right now.