What Mindfulness Really Looks Like

I know you've seen it. A picture of the back of someone meditating before some kind of amazing landscape like mountains against a cloudless sky or some pristine, glass-like body of water where the blues look unreal in their intensity and the greens look so alive they might come out of your computer screen. It's the kind of picture that makes you tense as you look at it, feeling incapable of living up to the calm that it portrays. It's the kind of picture that you might think has absolutely nothing to do with your real live mindful life.

Here's what mindfulness really looks like. I'm in Maine and decide the night before that I want to awake at 5:00 am and drive the 30 minutes to a trail in Acadia National Park to see the sunrise, which is due to occur at 6:57 am. I figure I'll get there and watch and meditate, just like one of those pictures. Imagine that!  I decided that I'd leave at 6:00 am and have enough time to get there and walk the short trail that leads out to the cliffs over the water. I've never actually gotten up specifically to see a sunrise before and feel excited. The morning comes and I'm 10 minutes behind schedule, but I have my tea in my travel cup and I'm on my way. I soon realize that this trail will take me longer to drive to than I had expected. I make one wrong turn on the island and now I'm officially late. Yes, late for the sunrise on my vacation. I get to the trail with my tea in hand, too late to open the trunk and get my gloves, and quickly start making my way, missing the fork that takes me directly to the cliff. Instead, I'm on the long loop and am now climbing cliffs to get to the side where the sun can actually be seen. I look at the time on my phone and it is 6:55. I pick up my pace, tea still in hand, climbing big boulders. No one else is around and I feel ridiculous rushing up the cliffs, stumbling over tree roots in my not quite awakened state, being late for a sunrise. I let out a laugh knowing no one will hear me. I eventually get there. It is 7:05. The sun has crested over the horizon. I missed it. I laugh realizing that one can't be late for a sunrise; it does not wait. I sit down on the edge of a rock high up over the water. My hands are chilly and I wish I had taken the extra second to grab my gloves. I'm not about to close my eyes and meditate. Instead, I stare out at the golden sun reflecting on the ripples of the water and watch the ducks far below. I see a fishing boat circling and wonder what it is up to. I hear a sound out in the water and see a hump of something. Too big to be a dolphin, too small to be a whale? I stare intensely hoping to see it again. I sit there taking in the beauty and wonder why I'd try to "meditate" in a place like that. There's no need. I'm there and I'm present, feeling slightly anxious from the rushing, slightly cold, awed by the beauty, inspired by the sounds. I think of all of those pictures of meditators in lotus positions in places like this and I suddenly feel relieved. This is what mindfulness also looks like...a woman stumbling toward the sunrise, late and anxious and laughing with her tea in her hand.