Your mind can cross years in a single minute.
Replay an old mistake.
Jump ahead to ten possible disasters.
Meanwhile, your actual life is happening in one square of time. This breath. This room. This sip.
Mindfulness is not about becoming a perfect monk.
It is the basic skill of returning to what is really here, instead of living only in the past and future in your head.
Teachers like Eckhart Tolle talk about the “pain-story” that builds when we stack thoughts on top of a moment.
“I failed back then, so I will always fail.”
“They said that, so I must be unlovable.”
The present is usually simpler than the story.
A sensation in your chest.
A sound in the room.
A feeling that rises and falls.
When you practice mindfulness, you are not trying to erase your thoughts.
You are learning to see them as thoughts.
You are giving your nervous system a break from constant threat mode.
Love, here, is the choice to actually meet your life as it is happening, instead of only worrying about it.
It is a quiet act of respect for your own experience.