The Art of Being Here

I have been thinking about a line from Alan Watts’s book Just So for weeks now. He writes that there never is anything but the present. The past and future are only abstractions. We live for the future mainly because our present is inadequate, and our present is inadequate because we are not seeing it fully.

That sentence stopped me cold. I was sitting at my kitchen table, half-distracted by my phone, planning the rest of the day. I was already somewhere else. And Watts was telling me that somewhere else does not exist.

The present is not a split second

Most of us think of the present as a sliver of time. The second hand on a watch. A moment so thin you can barely say “now” before it is gone. Watts says this is an abstract view. It is not the present we actually live in.

He describes the present as an oval-shaped field of vision. When you listen to music, you do not hear one note at a time. You hear phrases. You anticipate what comes next. You recall what was just played. The present has a clear center and fuzzy edges. It is wide enough to hold memory and expectation, but it is all one field.

This matters because it means the present is not something you run out of. You do not have to grab it or hold it or worry that it is slipping away. It is already here. It is the only thing that is here.

Why we live for the future

Watts says we live for the future because our present feels inadequate. We see it only in terms of abstractions. We think: one day it will all be all right. The thing we are looking for will happen.

But it never does. Not if you live that way.

He writes: “When you attain all your goals in life and rise to the top of your profession and have your beautiful spouse and children, you still feel the same as you’ve always felt. You’re still looking for something in the future, and there isn’t any future — not really.”

I know people who have reached the goals they spent decades chasing. The promotion. The house. The recognition. And within months, the feeling was the same. The restlessness returned. They had arrived, and they were still not here.

This is not a failure of achievement. It is a failure of attention. You can have everything and still miss the only time you ever live in.

Only people in the present can enjoy their plans

Watts makes a claim that sounds paradoxical at first. He says only people who live in proper relationship with the material present have any use for making plans. If the plans work out, they are actually capable of enjoying them. But if you are not fully here and your mind is always off somewhere else, you remain starved and always rushing to get someplace else. And there is nowhere to go except here.

I used to treat plans as escapes. I would plan a trip to escape my routine. I would plan a project to escape my boredom. But the planning itself became another form of absence. I was not on the trip while I planned it. I was not in the work while I imagined the result.

The ordinary moment is the point. This is the same insight from a different angle. Watts is not saying plans are bad. He is saying plans only work if you are present enough to enjoy them when they arrive. Otherwise you just plan the next one.

The material is the spiritual

Watts draws a sharp line between the material present and the abstract world. The abstract world is symbols, words, concepts. It has the same relationship to physical reality as a menu has to dinner. Or as money has to wealth.

He writes: “What is spiritual has nothing whatsoever to do with abstractions — it’s actually a lot closer to what we call physical reality or the material world.”

This flips the usual way we think. We treat the material world as base and the spiritual world as elevated. Watts says the spiritual is not somewhere else. It is right here. In the taste of food. In the sound of rain. In the weight of a tool in your hand. In the face of the person across from you.

The you don’t need to be fixed article on this site makes a similar move. It says you are already an extraordinary phenomenon of nature. You do not need to become something else. The same logic applies to the present moment. It is not a state you achieve. It is the ground you are already standing on.

Money and the good life

Watts is direct about our relationship with money. He says we live in a society in which we are more interested in accumulating the tokens of wealth than the actual wealth. We would rather eat the menu than the dinner.

He tells a story about banks that stored all the world’s gold in vaults on a Pacific island. The bookkeeping was perfect. The gold was gone. The managers had been keeping perfect records of something that no longer existed. In the end, money is nothing but bookkeeping.

This is not an argument against money. It is an argument against confusing the symbol with what it signifies. Money is useful. But it is only useful when you spend it. And more importantly, when you enjoy it.

Watts writes: “Money isn’t practical until you spend it and, more importantly, enjoy it.”

I think about this when I see people defer all pleasure to some future date. I will enjoy it when I retire. I will travel when I have more money. I will relax when the project is done. The project is never done. There is always another project. And if you never enjoy the money you make, what was the point of making it?

What true materialism looks like

Watts says real materialism is the love of material things. Not the abstract love of wealth, status, or symbols. The actual love of physical reality.

He gives examples. Cooking food properly. Wearing clothes that feel good. Building a chair that is comfortable to sit in. Making love with attention. These are arts. They require discipline, devotion, and skill. And they all happen in the present.

We have neglected these arts. We eat for nutrition, not taste. We dress for status, not comfort. We work for money, not pleasure. We treat the physical world as a means to an abstract end.

But the physical world is the end. It is the only world we ever experience. When you taste good bread, that is not a symbol of nourishment. That is nourishment. When you feel sun on your skin, that is not a metaphor for warmth. That is warmth.

The problem with abstraction

Watts says our education trains us to become obsessed with abstractions. We learn to solve problems on paper. We learn to manipulate symbols. But we forget that the symbols are not the thing.

He writes: “People who do not relate well to the material present — the physical present — become incompetent in the practical arts of life. They become bad cooks, bad lovers, bad architects, bad potters, bad clothiers, and so on because they really have no love for anything except abstractions — quantities, money, status, and symbols.”

This is not an argument against thinking. It is an argument against thinking instead of living. Words have a use. But they are only useful when they operate in subordination to a kind of understanding that does not depend on words at all.

You can read about wine. You can study the chemistry of fermentation. You can memorize tasting notes. But none of that is the same as drinking wine and tasting it. The life is a play, not a machine article on this site explores a related idea. We treat life like a problem to solve. But life is not a problem. It is a performance. And you cannot perform it from a distance.

Practical ways to be here

Watts does not offer a five-step program. He offers a direction. Here is what I have taken from his writing.

Notice when you are somewhere else. You are eating dinner and thinking about tomorrow’s meeting. You are walking and planning the conversation you will have when you get home. You are with someone and already thinking about what you will say next. The noticing is already a form of returning.

Treat the present as a field, not a point. The present is not the second hand on the watch. It is the whole scene. The sounds around you. The sensations in your body. The light on the wall. It is wider than your thoughts.

Distinguish the symbol from the thing. When you want something, ask whether you want the symbol or what it signifies. Do you want the promotion, or do you want the feeling of competence? Do you want the expensive watch, or do you want to feel successful? The symbol can never satisfy you. Only the thing can.

Enjoy what you have while you have it. Watts says money is not practical until you spend it and enjoy it. The same is true for food, for rest, for time with people. If you save it all for a future that never comes, you have wasted it.

Stop treating life as a problem to solve. The machine model tells you that every difficulty is a malfunction. The dramatic model tells you that difficulty is part of the plot. You do not have to fix everything. You have to be in it.

What is really here

Watts writes: “That radiance and complexity are right here — they’re never somewhere else. You don’t get them anywhere but here. But if you try to find them and really pay attention and bring them into focus, you’re just pushing them away. They have to come to you.”

This is the hardest part. We want the present to be special. We want it to feel like an achievement. But the present is not an achievement. It is the ordinary moment. The dishes. The traffic. The conversation. The silence.

The meditation has no purpose article on this site says something similar. Meditation is not a technique for getting anything. It is just sitting. The value is in the act itself, not in what it produces.

The same is true for being here. You do not need to become more present. You do not need to fix your attention. You just need to notice that you are already in it. The searching is the only thing that makes it feel otherwise.

The bottom line

We live for a future that never arrives. We chase symbols instead of the things they signify. We treat the present as a waiting room instead of the main event. And then we wonder why we feel empty.

Watts says nothing is missing. There is nothing missing at all unless you are starving or freezing, which most of us are not. When we are adequately fed and sheltered, there is not anything missing. It is all there. Only nobody is there to see it. Everybody is wandering off after something else in the distance.

The art of being here is not a technique. It is a direction. Look at what is in front of you. Feel what is in your body. Taste what is in your mouth. Hear what is around you. This is it. This is the material present. It is the only thing you ever get.

You do not need to get anywhere else. There is nowhere else to go.