Step 4 of 6 · Settle Into A New City Or Country
The Present Moment Is Home
The Present Moment Is Home
Step 4 · 11 min
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The mind is almost never here.
Research by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that people's minds are wandering from what they are doing approximately 47% of the time — typically to past events or future scenarios. And that mind-wandering is consistently associated with lower happiness, regardless of the pleasantness of the thoughts.
The present moment — the only moment in which life is actually occurring — is largely bypassed.
Why the mind's habit of living in the past or future creates homelessness in the present
The now as the only place the internal home actually exists
Mindfulness as homecoming — the specific practice
Presence with what is, rather than resistance to it
Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness: paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgment. Not as a performance of calm. Not as the elimination of thought. As the practice of returning, again and again, to what is actually happening now.
The present moment is the only place where the internal home is accessible. The past exists only in memory — which is shaped by mood, narrative, and interpretation. The future exists only in imagination — which is shaped by anxiety, hope, and projection. The present moment is what is actually occurring.
Buddhist psychology — which modern mindfulness draws on — speaks of dukkha (suffering) as arising primarily from the mind's resistance to what is: the craving for things to be different, the aversion to what is present. The practice of presence is, in part, the practice of meeting what is here — whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral — without the added layer of wishing it were otherwise.
This is not resignation. Presence does not mean passive acceptance of circumstances that should be changed. It means meeting the present moment clearly, without the distortion of past-based reactivity or future-based anxiety — from which clear, effective action becomes possible.
The homecoming: Thich Nhat Hanh writes of mindfulness as "coming home" — returning to the present moment as the place where the self and the world actually meet. The sense of not-at-home often dissolves in genuine presence: when the mind is fully here, there is nowhere else to want to be.
Find a comfortable position · Read slowly
The mindfulness of daily activities:
Choose one ordinary daily activity — eating, showering, walking, washing dishes — and do it with full attention this week. Not while thinking about other things. Not while listening to something. With the full attention of your senses on what is actually happening.
Notice what the practice is like. Notice how it feels different from your habitual level of presence.
The home you are looking for is here. It is always here. The practice is returning to it.