The Sufi poet Rumi said this: “Past and future veil God from our sight; burn them both with fire.”
In other words, be present.
But how do we burn the past and future? And how do we know it’s good for us?
What Bomb Disposal Experts Know
Let’s consider the experience of someone who endures a massive amount of stress from their profession — to see what we can learn from it.
Some years ago, researchers studied bomb-disposal operatives from the military. These operatives are good at what they do. Otherwise, they’d be dead. When interviewed, they shared some core principles of the profession.
First: avoid “the rabbit hole.” It’s easy to become worried. Your mind starts to race. You panic. Your brain starts asking what if? questions. The operatives call this the rabbit hole — and if you go down it, things are going to get very bad very fast.
Second: emphasize the positive and focus on what you can control. Stay realistic about the facts of the situation, but stay calm and direct your attention toward what you are actually able to influence.
Third: take one step at a time. We’re all scared of the unknown because our mind loves to speculate and worry. Instead, decide what you need to do next and execute that task. That prevents the gap from opening up where speculation and worry creep in. When you have the next step in your mind, that’s what you focus on. Follow the path, one foot in front of the next.
But what truly separates these operatives from the rest of us is something remarkable. The elite bomb-disposal experts, as soon as they entered the danger zone — which they reframed into a less pejorative term, calling it the “launch pad” — assumed a state of extreme, meditative focus. Their heart rates actually lowered. They entered a level of consciousness in which they became intensely present and, as one operator described it, “became one with the device they were working on.”
These operatives also scored high on tests of self-belief and confidence. Was it false confidence or blind faith? No. It was conviction from experience — experience passed down from their instructors, which culminated in their own hard-won knowledge from previous missions.
The Science of a Wandering Mind
Neuroscientists have done extensive research on the benefits of being present. They can see which regions of our brain are active when we perform certain tasks, and they can also see what our brain is doing when we aren’t doing anything in particular — when we’re daydreaming, dwelling on the past, or planning for the future.
It turns out that one set of brain regions is active when we are thinking about ourselves, thinking about others, remembering what happened, or worrying about what’s coming. A completely different part of the brain is active when we are focused on the task at hand.
In 2010, Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published a landmark study in Science that tracked thousands of people throughout their daily lives — while eating, working, watching TV, shopping, exercising. They found that our minds wander about 47 percent of the time. We wander the most during routine activities like self-grooming. We wander the least during intimate moments with the people we love.
And here is the key finding: it is the sheer act of mind-wandering — dwelling on the past or worrying about the future — that makes us unhappy. Not the activity we’re doing. Not our circumstances. The wandering itself. We are happiest when we are fully in the moment with the people who matter to us.
What Presence Feels Like
Think about how it feels to be in the company of someone who is truly present — someone who is actively listening to you, fully engaged.
Now compare that to someone who is distracted. Worried about the future. Absorbed in self-pity from past trauma. Lost in their phone.
We might try to be compassionate with someone working through their anxiety. But we can honestly say that we feel more enriched by the experience of being with someone who is listening and relating to us with focus. We feel the empathy, and we want to return it. We cherish those relationships. We call those people our true friends.
When we are at our best in our relationships, we have empathy. We are not fixating on the past or the future. We are in the moment. We are present.
Rumi Was Right
No matter what our goals are — worldly or spiritual — when we are not focused, we cannot achieve them. When a child is trying to read or study, a parent will insist that the television and music are turned off. When a surgeon is performing a delicate procedure, we would insist on pin-drop silence in the operating room.
The bomb-disposal expert on the launch pad. The child with her book. The surgeon with a steady hand. The friend who truly listens.
Burn the past and the future. Be here now.