Presence Over Performance

Some of the best moments in our lives will never look like much from the outside.

There were days on the Appalachian Trail when absolutely nothing happened.

No summit.

No big view.

No dramatic encounter with a bear.

I just walked.

Sometimes for hours through the same tunnel of green, looking a few feet ahead at dirt, roots and rocks.

Those aren’t the moments people usually ask me about.

They want to know about the big stuff. Katahdin. The storms. The hardest days. The beautiful views.

I understand why.

Those are the moments that make the story.

But they weren’t necessarily the moments that made the experience.

A lot of the trail happened in between.

Morning light coming through the trees. The sound of water before I could see the stream. Taking my shoes off at lunch and sitting on a rock.

A conversation with someone I’d met twenty minutes earlier.

Eating something that would be completely forgettable anywhere else and thinking it was the greatest thing I’d ever tasted.

Nothing worth posting about.

Everything worth being there for.

I find that harder now.

There are so many ways to stand just outside an experience while we're still having it.

I can be somewhere with my kids, genuinely enjoying myself, and suddenly I'm thinking about taking a picture. Sometimes I reach for my phone almost automatically.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I love taking pictures. I love looking back at them. Some of my most treasured possessions are photographs from seasons of life I wish I could visit again.

But I’ve also noticed how easily capturing a moment can pull me out of it.

And it goes beyond phones.

Sometimes we're thinking about the story we'll tell while the thing is still happening. Or wondering whether we're doing something the right way. Or comparing an experience we're actually enjoying with somebody else's version of it.

Even the things we do because they're supposed to help us be more present can become another thing to get right.

I've certainly managed to overthink a hike before.

The strange thing is that the Appalachian Trail wasn't memorable because every day was extraordinary.

Most days weren't.

I woke up. Packed my things. Walked. Ate. Walked some more. Found somewhere to sleep.

And somewhere inside all of that ordinary stuff was an experience that changed my life.

I think about that now when I'm tempted to believe the meaningful parts of life are somewhere else.

On the next trip.

After I finish whatever I'm working on.

When the kids are a little older and things are less chaotic.

When there's more time.

Meanwhile, there is a four-year-old trying to tell me something that feels incredibly important to him.

There is dinner happening in the kitchen.

There is a walk we've taken a hundred times.

There is today.

I still take the picture.

I just try to remember to put the phone back down.

Because the point was never to prove I was there.

It was to actually be there.