> I don’t know anyone […] who is actually unaware of the present time. That’s pretty superficial. People are seldom aware of now. We are thinking of how a meet

> I don’t know anyone […] who is actually unaware of the present time. That’s pretty superficial. People are seldom aware of now. We are thinking of how a meeting went in the past, or what we’ll make for dinner, or how we’ll handle an upcoming conflict, or whether a decision we made in the past was the right one. We aren’t even in our physical location: we think about wanting to go out on a walk, to be back on the beach, to rest in bed, to not have to suffer through a seminar. The idea here is to be _present_ in the moment, in this place, because that’s all there is: everything else is a delusion. Being present also means appropriate response: a pond ripples precisely as much as it should when a stone is thrown in: not too much, not too little. Too often we are carried too and fro by our thoughts; they drive us, we respond automatically, being pushed from one thought to the next. Mindfulness is being able to observe these thoughts as they pass by and realizing how to respond appropriately, as we choose; being truly alive and not a mindless automaton responding to things that “happen” to us. There really isn’t any new age or spiritual component here if you wish.