Mindfulness is simply, Awareness:
Paying attention on purpose,
IN THE PRESENT MOMENT,
without judgment
as if your life depends on it. – Jon Kabat-Zinn, MD
It is being with what is.
The mountains came down. The river and streams moved boulders and houses downstream. People were displaced; many not only lost their homes, but the land on which their houses once stood. The unimaginable happened. Inhabitants of the Hickory Nut Gorge learned over time, the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.
We learned that Patience is not waiting. Patience is surrender. “When are your roads going to be back to normal? Relatives and well-meaning friends from afar ask and keep asking.
We learn to pause, and breathe, and smile. Or not.
It is not easy. But we are bearing witness every day in a thousand ways.
We wait at stop lights (stop lights in Bat Cave!) and we “Yield” to allow the construction workers and debris removal trucks to have pride of place. We wave. We say thank you.
Bearing witness can be a deeply moving experience. When driving on any of our roads in or out of the gorge, we finally get to the person holding the ‘SLOW’ or ‘STOP’ sign, we look into each other’s eyes. I shall always remember the man, an elder, holding the sign, whose eyes filled with tears when I rolled down the window to greet him and say thank you. It was a brief moment but never to be forgotten. It was early on, when we were all fairly tender, and barely able to be present. Still in shock. Eye to eye, we were bearing witness. We are here. We are doing this.
Then only last week my refrigerator finally died, after the freezer went first after the storm –no doubt because of the on and off again of the generator or the many power surges; two men delivering the new refrigerator to my home, drove through Chimney Rock to get here, and when they arrived at my door, asked, “when we finish, can we pray for you?” So, there we were, after they brought out the old refrigerator and installed the new one, standing outside by their truck, holding hands, and their prayer of thanks for my safety during the storm and a blessing on the house. When I shared this story with my dear friend and neighbor who is also a volunteer at the Fire Station, she said, “Yes, there’s a lot of that going on here.”
It doesn’t make the news. The Good News is everywhere! And all we have to do is pay attention. Why I am grateful to share these thoughts here, now. What if, each of us were to tell all the stories we have experienced or witnessed–of complete strangers helping other people, about the people who drove miles to come here with equipment and supplies, or simply befriended a neighbor or spoke with others who, perhaps under less dire circumstances, we might never have!
The goodness and mercy extended here in our little part of the world has been monumental, and as many have said of the storm damage here, “this is Biblical.”
Whether or not we choose to see it this way, no one can dispute the pure selfless awareness we have born witness to since September 2024.
What we pay attention to, increases. As Victor Frankl wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
We have learned in monumental ways how we have no control over what happens, but we do have a choice of how we respond to what happens. There’s a lot of modern research that says that people who can notice and feel their pain recover faster. It takes courage and support, and we see this happening here every single day. Lots of it.
Poet Mary Oliver wrote:
“Lessons for Living a Life: Pay Attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Mattie Decker is a Mindfulness Instructor and a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide whose practices assist individuals with mindful living, enhancing health and wellbeing. For online classes or in person at Fairview Public Library, please contact Mattie at drmattie.decker@gmail.com.
