“I think I continue to be engaged with design because it’s so tied to the rest of my world. Design is informed by music, culture, politics, and everything else that’s happening around us. Being involved and aware of these other things only makes our work better. It’s a good excuse for me to go out and live an engaging life outside of design.”
Michael Formica on being present:
So, how do we stay present? The first thing to recognize is that, try as we might, we really can only do one thing at a time, so we ought to do that thing wholeheartedly. Most of our time is spent in the past or the future, rather than the present moment. What we end up doing is passing through that moment on the way to somewhere else and, in doing so, we miss the moment. That’s how life ends up passing us by - we do it to ourselves.
Rehearsing - and that’s all we’re doing is rehearsing — the past is problematic because it’s something that can’t be changed. It’s done, set in stone, immutable and immovable. Certainly we can change our relationship to the past, but staying there is simply ruminative and, for some of us, baldly destructive.
Anticipating the future is also problematic - even futile — because, no matter how much we’d like to convince ourselves otherwise, we can’t really control the direction in which things will go. We can set an intention, true, but, in the end, the universe has a way of deciding.
Being present, being here, being available has a been a sort of mantra of mine for 2011. It’s way too easy for me to get consumed by what still needs to be done and things coming up in the future that I miss out on right now. It’s a daily quest. It’s something I have to work on. It’s something I need to remind myself daily.
I’m doing it for myself but I also want to be present for those I surround myself with. I don’t want to miss something—a special moment with a good friend. I think being present with those you love is a giving yourself to them in that moment. Forgetting you exist to be fully present with someone else. It’s a gift.
Gift. Present. It’s the same thing isn’t it?
“The art comes from the awkward ache. The knot in my stomach usually teaches me more than comfort ever could. The sculptor’s chisel carves away at the block to bring something new into being. In the same way, we hammer away at the world we’re given to bring something new into being. We re-appropriate the past and present to create the future — breath by breath.”
—Jon Foreman on Making a Living. He goes on:
In fact, the argument could be made that a human being is most God-like when she is most creative: ingeniously crafting the true and the beautiful out of the confines of the present tense. Remixing tomorrow out of the raw materials of today. Re-appropriating a dream into reality. And it’s not just vagabond surfers who chase down preposterous dreams of doing what they love — humanity has been doing this all along.
A scene towards the end of Woody Allen’s (beautifully shot) Manhattan where Woody’s character asks what makes life worth living.
Me? My family makes life worth living. My friends make life worth living. Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, a hot cup of coffee in the morning, books by Rob Bell and Donald Miller, a good home cooked meal shared with loved-ones, sunsets, unexpected smiles, messy sketchbooks, nature, conversations, Jesus…
