I say I’m not a spiritual person, but in one particular way I’m a yogi. A spiritual super hero. Because I’ve learned how to do something that spiritual seekers strive to be able to do:

I live in the present.

Some call it mindfulness, or living in the moment.

People go on retreats to learn how to live this way. They practice yoga, and meditate, and take vows of silence. They invest in plane tickets to India and LuLuLemon pants.

My own super hero origin story involves co-owning an organic vegetable farm for eight years, and loving someone with terminal cancer for three.

Living in the Now & Organic Vegetable Production

While living in the Cowichan Valley in 2016, I spent a few hours every Monday spinning sheep wool, listening to a circle of older, wiser people talk about fibre and life. We drank spicy Celestial Seasonings Tiger tea from pottery mugs and our fingers got sticky from the lanolin wax in the wool.

One day, the conversation turned to Saskatchewan farm wives, and how they are (apparently) the calmest people in the world. The Zen-est. Nothing ruffles their feathers. (Which is, ironically, an agricultural saying.)

I related to these farm wives instantly, because I had been a farm wife. Brock spent the winter making detailed, elaborate crop plans and business projections … and then we did our best to adapt them to an ever-changing reality through the spring, summer and fall, because no amount of forethought and preparation can inoculate a farm against the weather or human fickleness.

We faced extreme drought, windstorms, wire worms, ravens, labour shortages, mechanical failures and many more obstacles every season. That’s just part of farming.

You can do your best to plan for contingencies, but there’s no point in worrying about what might happen. You can either rail against the unexpected, or do your best to swim with the tide and find your way to the other shore.

In short: farming trained us to live in the present.

Living in the Now & Palliative Care

Then Brock was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer and we stopped farming, because no matter how well you plan ahead, you can’t anticipate every curve ball.

A year after his diagnosis, we began to understand that Brock wouldn’t live much longer, and he began “palliative care,” which means his and our quality of life became the most important priority, rather than clinging desperately (futilely) to hope for a cure.

For two years we avoided the future tense. It was especially painful to use the future tense involving Isaac, because we both knew Brock wouldn’t be there for our son’s small steps toward independence. The driving lessons. The grandkids.

That’s when I realized how often we humans talk about the future. At meals with friends and family, people would mention their “next year” trips or their “someday” career plans, and I would cringe at the accidental insensitivity. Unlike the rest of us, Brock would not have a next year or someday.

And I wanted to shock these friends awake: maybe they too would be thrown a curve ball, and not have a future. A car accident. Divorce. Cancer. Why postpone these dreams and plans?

We had been shocked awake, and we made the most of Brock’s every healthy day. Instead of planning ahead (even a day ahead), we chose our adventures every morning, depending on whether Brock was able to get out of bed.

We made the most of every good day. We didn’t postpone our adventures.

When friends invited us to dinner, days in advance, we’d accept with the caveat that we might cancel at the last minute, if Brock hit a rough patch or I couldn’t wake him up from his nap.

Two years of living like this, especially that last year, when Brock spent most of his time in his adjustable hospital bed or in his LaZ Boy recliner, refined our “living in the present” habits.

And I embraced that way of living, because to think about the future was to think about a time without Brock. When my thoughts wandered ahead, and I saw that sad and scary future without my husband, I would scold myself back to the present: it was silly to be sad about Someday, when I still had the man I loved right there beside me.

The Downside of Living in the Now

Living in the present isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I struggle to accept short-term inconvenience, because I have trouble seeing the Big Picture.

Being the primary caregiver to an infant was a nightmare, because I couldn’t see past the day-to-day sleep deprivation and other challenges of those first two years. Even now, every time my son demonstrates some new independence (like pulling a chair over so he can reach a muffin on the counter) I am surprised and awed.

I also have problems focusing on a single task (although that might be the widow-brain fog). I’m like a bird, drawn to every new shiny thing. I burn food all the time, because I wander out of the kitchen and start doing laundry or hot-ironing my hair. I set timers for everything, and Isaac has learned to repeat “beep beep,” grab my hand, and lead me back to the oven when the timer goes off.

But overall, I think this is a great way to live: to wake up every day and choose how to make the most of these hours, instead of drifting on auto-pilot. Instead of postponing plans and dreams and adventures for some future time.

Stoic Meditation

So how do you achieve mindfulness if you don’t farm, or if you’re lucky enough to not have a spouse dying of cancer?

There’s a mental exercise you can try, which I discovered in William B. Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. As an example of a Stoic meditation, Irvine suggests you choose something in your life — your kid, another loved one, your job — and then take a few minutes to imagine a life without that something.

Feel what you would feel without it. Are you sad? Relieved?

Then bring yourself back to the present, when you still have that something. Maybe now you see the need to change a part of your life, or maybe your appreciation for that something has been refreshed.

Even for a yogi like me, this mental exercise helps me see how lucky I am in the present.

Living in the Moment

We had some friends over for board games this winter, and I found myself singing along to the Tim McGraw song in the background:

“I went skydiving,
I went Rocky mountain climbing,
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu …”

Because I’d recently paraglided, hiked in the Rockies and even rode a mechanical bull at a kids’ fair, it felt like I was just telling my friends what I’d been up to lately.

Thanks to Brock, thanks to eight years of farming, I’ve learned how to live in the moment and make the most of that time. I’ve learned how to “live like you were dying.”

What’s more, I’ve found a balance of responsible, future planning and day-to-day joy. My son has an RESP … and we go sledding when it snows.

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