not enough presents (presence)
“whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” - Eckhart Tolle
Presence is a challenge because sometimes it’s not always comfortable, or what we think we want. I was faced with this feeling a lot in my early years; in trying to understand the challenges I was faced with. Now, I’m lucky to have resources and teachers who help me understand the wisdom in all my challenges, and I often come back to this song which uses a beautiful Alan Watts audio when need to re-center into acceptance of my present moment.
Over the past few years I’ve come back to this question a lot: what do I really want, and why do I want it?
Weirdly, when I first arrived in California I had literally zero direction of desire… I didn’t feel like I wanted anything. I had wanted to move here for so long, and wanted so many of the changes that were now happening for me, so I was at this place of contentment and re-calibrating. What was my new focus? This experience demonstrated so clearly to me that everything we want is for the journey. The actual moment when our desires are realized, that experience of completion, is fleeting. Think of college versus the actual moment when you get your diploma; the richness was not in that final moment, it was in everything leading up to it. For me, the answer to this question became clearer as I peeled back layers of who I thought I was. I wanted to achieve a lot of things because I thought I was supposed to, and that was enough reason to get me to do them.
At the time in my life when I was painting “presence”, I was very busy checking boxes; doing everything I thought I was "supposed to," but none of it made my heart sing. I was inspired to paint this after reading Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" back in 2021. The initial description I wrote for it was: "She’s sitting on a pile of the presence she seeks, if only she realized right now is the gift— and it’s always right now." The gifts beneath her represent the present moments that keep slipping through her fingers. She’s constantly in search of the next thing to achieve, which she thinks will bring happiness, but it never arrives. In each moment of seeking, she’s missing the very gift of presence—and so the cycle begins again.
mood board + playlist based around the message of “presence”
When I moved across the country in 2022, I left this painting behind at my parents' house in Boston. I had lost touch with its meaning. Luckily, in March 2024, I rediscovered it and decided to bring it back to California with me. I was dreaming up :Acts of Love” around that time and kept wondering what the first piece should be. This one just made sense; the story of Acts of Love is an inner journey, and it begins with a deep yearning to awaken to something more, a shift into presence.
I made a playlist inspired by the message of this piece- here if you’d like to listen. It’s gentle, dreamy, and sweet.
xx, Katie
