Pause for a moment. No—really, pause. Turn the phone to silent and place it face down, find something beautiful to look at, and check in: can you feel a gentle hum beneath all this busyness? That’s life, in process, bubbling its unpredictability just below the surface. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear it smirking at our grand plans and colour-coded calendars (yes, mine is multi-coloured). Sometimes I say: I plan, God laughs. [The God of your understanding].
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, dragging my feet through awkward moments and stumbles, it’s that life isn’t a neatly-packaged parcel waiting at the doorstep. How I wish that were so, at least now and then. No, it’s a sprawling, creative, alive and unpredictable mess:—a process, not a product.
One of my guiding beacons is Eugene Gendlin, philosopher and codifier of Focusing. He might nudge us to get curious about this sensation of “living in flux.” He’d say there’s wisdom in our felt sense that curious bodily inkling nobody can see but everybody knows. I like to call is “bodyfeel.” It’s like your tummy flipping before a big talk, or the sense of being stared at from behind —pure, unfiltered process.
So here’s an invitation: what if we pause (again!), take a breath and sense into what’s happening physically. Can you feel your heartbeat? A flutter behind the ribs? Can you even feel the innate connection you have between in-here and out-there? (Gendlin describes the body and environment as intricately entwined, being one).
Let your body answer before your mind tries to wrap things up in tidy conclusions. Notice how you’re always “in process,” like a story whose ending is still being written—sometimes in invisible ink.
Some suggestions for experimenting:
- Swap “I must finish this to be happy” with “I’m sensing, I’m moving, I’m alive in this moment.” Trust that meaning is being made right now, not just when everything’s settled or resolved;
- Take three breaths: what’s shifting inside? What colour would this mood be, if you could see it? Or perhaps you can see it…
- Next time you catch yourself spiralling into “future tripping,” gently reel your attention back to what’s real, what’s present, what’s felt. There’s carpe diem, and there’s carpe process.
Life is unpredictable. We may not like it, but it is so. Through the lens of process, we might find a process-centred life could be delightfully
unpredictable. You don’t have to reply to every single email, solve every puzzle, or answer every question. Maybe your finest moment today was noticing the autumnal hues of the leaves on the ground and kicking through them. Celebrate those messy, unfinished, uncertain, the oh-that’s-interesting moments.
If there’s a secret to presence, it’s this: life is always in process, just like you. So, pause, breathe, acknowledge, and smile at the rawness of the day. Let yourself be in progress and in process. Who knows what might happen if you do?
[My private practice is full at the moment, so you’re welcome to reach out for an update on my availability in the future].