Find a place and a way to be. You may find it helpful to be somewhere without distraction, if such a place exists for you. If not, let it be what it is.

In this practice you will be asked to reflect back into memory and forward into the future — and so you may wish to be somewhere private, or you may like to be out in the world. You may wish to sit, stand, lie down, or you may want to keep moving. Remember you can always repeat this practice, listen or read again, in a new place and in a new way.

Take a deep breath and begin by considering the present moment — the moment you are in right now.

Think about how you might define this moment
If it’s big or small
If it’s time-based or more of a feeling
If it’s something you hold in your mind
Or something that you sense in your body.

What does it encompass?

Who does it encompass?

Consider that being in the present moment might also mean being in the middle of time — in the middle of many moments, each one being lived in relation to the other.

You might choose to think about this through the lens of Elise Boulding, a peace researcher and sociologist who conceived the idea of “the 200-year present” as a way of reaching into both past and future to understand the expanse of now.

Take another deep breath and as you exhale begin to think back to when you were very young, as young as you can remember, and even younger than what your memory might hold.

And now think, if you can, of the oldest person who would have in some way known you when you were very young — and who would have held you. This may have been a grandparent or a great grandparent, or someone who was a caregiver or just simply there for you. This may not be an actual memory — but maybe just something you know, something that makes sense, that this person was there and would have held you when you were small.

When you have this image of this person in your mind, try to imagine that person when they were very young. And then if you can, go back even further and calculate the actual or approximate year that they were born.

Think now to the youngest person in your life. It might be your own child or someone you care for. Or if you yourself are young, it might be a sibling or a cousin or a friend.

When you have the image of this young person in your mind, try to imagine them getting older, living a long and full life, and eventually growing to be very old. And then thinking about the decade we are now in and adding a very long and full life to that, calculate if you can the furthest decade to which they might live.

When you have that image in your mind, think of this -
You were held
And touched
And you will touch the lives of people that cover a 200-year present.

Take three deep breaths, in and out on your own time. As you breathe, imagine this reach, these lines of connection that stretch across 200 years, holding past and future right here with you in the present.

Imagine this reach as light that moves out from you in all directions, at all times.

Open your gaze if it has narrowed.

The light is still reaching
You are still reaching
And being reached for in return.