RESTLESSNESS v.s. PRESENCE

“I was trying so hard to not waste my time, but in a way I was wasting my life.”

– Jesse van der Velde

For many years I was restless. My mind would never stop. Always thinking about “what’s next”. “How can I grow further”. Both as a person, as well as in my business. I would go to the sauna with my wife Marjolijn, and I would still constantly be thinking, creating, visualizing. Like I couldn’t waste any minute. Truth is, I was totally wasting those beautiful moments.

About 6 years ago I started to see this pattern. I saw that I had achieved most of the goals that I had, but I was still restless. Struggling to become silent within myself. I started to dislike that reality a lot. I got frustrated with my own restlessness. Frustration + restlessness aren’t a good combination, I can tell you that!

This was during the time my son got born, my first child. I would be with him and I would still be thinking about business. I knew I wasn’t present with him. But holding him, made me think. It was like he was teaching me. Slowly teaching me to just be. His vulnerability as a baby. So pure, so authentic. Untouched. What a beautiful teacher.

It got me to re-think the concept of time. My concept of time always was: don’t waste it. Be productive. But with that, I was wasting beautiful moments in my life. Where I wasn’t truly present. Where I couldn’t just “be”.

I was trying so hard to not waste my time, but in a way I was wasting my life. What a big contradiction.

The first time I took a plant medicine about 4 years ago, the medicine was showing me this restlessness I still had. Even in the ceremony, singing and sitting around the fire on Saturday evening, I felt restless, lol! Thinking: “what do I DO with this”, “how do I FIX this” (this being the thing I was shown by the medicine, in that moment). Slowly I started to learn, that especially in ceremony, there’s nothing to “do”. Just be.

And isn’t that true for life in general?

Isn’t life so much about finding that ability to just “be”?

To be completely one with the moment. With yourself. With your heart. With your emotions in that particular moment. Even being OK with the emotions you don’t like?

That to me, is true presence.

It is being OK with whatever is.

Presence is being OK with whatever is. It is tested in the circumstances and emotions you don’t like. Giving them your breath, your full attention. Being there fully in the moment, with all that is, standing strong like a warrior but vulnerable with your heart open at the same time, is presence.

– Jesse van der Velde

Life is almost like is a test. Constantly providing circumstances to test us. Not for the goal of testing us, but it being a test as a result of the fact that we still haven’t learned!

It isn’t until you accept that all that lives within you, like restlessness was living within me, can be seen as a test, that you can play the game of fixing it.

And that fixing is done through giving anything that lives inside you, your breath. Breathing to it. Giving it your full attention. So you give it space.

Because from that space, you can find a new perspective. And heal it.

A new perspective can never be found through ignoring something, overruling it with our mind, let alone by “doing”. And that is what we’ve learned through Personal Development: to act in spite of fear, to do regardless of what you feel. If you want to be successful, yes, you need to do it that way. But if you want to be happy, whole, if you want to know who you are, you have to take time to be fully present with yourself and your feelings. You have to be with what lives inside of you. You have to look at it, feel it, research it. So you can then find a new perspective. That is healing. A new perspective.

Healing is about finding a new perspective.

– Jesse van der Velde

I found the way to heal my restlessness.

And through that, I found presence. Presence with my family. Finding the ability to fully be with them, not thinking about work. Not thinking about what’s next. Enjoying the endless energy, creativity, love and joy of my kids.

Because enjoying the moment, is what life is about. And through that, no time is wasted, ever.

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