I aim to be in the moment for at least ten minutes every day. Every so often, Dog Features – our elderly lurcher – will punctuate my entire ten minute meditation with various and assorted reminders of her presence. I have come to think of it as her performance piece.
This is how it starts. DF will be stretched out in her bed asleep. I will settle down in my chair, select the meditation app on my phone, and close my eyes. After a few seconds, a gong quietly sounds.
Instantly, she is up and tip-tapping her way across the laminate flooring. Her arrival in the kitchen is heralded by a triumphant crunching of dog biscuits, then a rhythmic lapping of water. More tip-tapping signals her return to the living room. There is an electric pause as she stands in front of me (I can feel her stare), followed by a dramatic flumping back down into her bed, a wracking sigh and a burp. But it doesn’t end there – for now, there is licking to do, as some part of her anatomy is washed. At length. Finally, in case my attention is wavering, she closes with smacking sounds more usually associated with the wearing of ill-fitting dentures.
The gong chimes. Silence falls once more.
Of course, there is nothing to stop me meditating in a different room or shutting the door. I could wear ear plugs. But all that movement and rhythm and emotion has got to be telling me something about just ‘being’.
And then there’s the humour. At some point – usually around the water lapping section – I’ll start to smile. By the time she’s got to the flumping and sighing, I’ll be giggling like a schoolgirl. So although I may only return my attention to my breathing fleetingly, the place I come back from is always joyful.
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