I was 36 when I realized I might be holding out for a different past. Until then, I was trying to figure out what my future was supposed to be like.
I was on my first silent meditation retreat. Until then, I don’t think I had ever sat still with my own mind and emotions long enough to recognize how much of what made life difficult was coming from inside me rather than the environment around me.
I experienced moments of relaxation during those four interminable days, but boredom and physical discomfort were always close at hand. A sit that began comfortably enough could slowly intensify until physical or emotional discomfort became almost unbearable. From where I sat, everyone else in the meditation hall was having an easier time.
During one sit, I was horrified by the realization—or the vivid impression—that I had stood up in the middle of a meditation session, stuck out my tongue, and shaken my head as if I’d completely lost control, filling the contemplative silence with loud nonsense before sitting back down.
Had I actually lost control, or did I imagine it? I wondered if meditating too much could make me lose my mind—or reveal that I’d already lost it and was only pretending otherwise.
Then, during one of the evening talks, the teacher said something about the delusion of holding out for a different past. I had never thought about this. Surely it didn’t apply to me. And yet, when I started to reflect on the basic chapters of my life, something snapped into focus that I suddenly couldn’t unsee.
I wished I hadn’t been a little boy raised in Kansas who made friends with girls much more easily than with boys. I wished my parents had liked me, understood me, or had been better equipped to support my interests and needs.
The list kept growing.
What if I hadn’t gone to a fundamentalist Baptist church three times a week throughout my childhood? What if I had developed crushes on girls instead of boys? What if I had asked better questions when my college piano teacher told me my technique was holding me back—that I couldn’t keep developing musically unless I started over and relearned habits that had already become muscle memory?
What if my grandfather hadn’t been so cruel to his children? What if I hadn’t gotten divorced? What if I’d gone to a better college or lived in a bigger city or been good at earning money? What would my life have been like if I hadn’t turned out to be gay? What if, in the church, being gay hadn’t eclipsed every other part of who I was, or if, in the wider world, it wasn’t treated as the one thing that made everything else irrelevant?
There it was.
I was holding out for a different past.
It was like reading a diary I had been secretly writing my entire life ,but hiding from myself.
For over three decades, some fundamental part of me had watched my life from the inside, digging in its heels and silently screaming: NO! NO! NO! Not this. Not that. There’s been a mistake. This can’t be my life! NOOOO!
I was holding out for a past where I could have been someone entirely different—a straight boy from a big city, with parents who understood him and guided him toward quallified teachers and mentors. Maybe then I’d have become a respected musician, writer, or artist, capable of making my way in the world whether it welcomed me or not.
Recognizing this was stunning—and strangely relieving. I could finally see the invisible prison I had helped build around myself. But seeing it didn’t automatically unlock the door.
The way through
I’m 60 now, and that retreat insight has been quietly evolving within me for 24 years.
It hasn’t been about forcing myself to accept my history or deny my longing for things to have unfolded differently. Logic can’t dissolve disappointment, grief, or the lingering effects of circumstances beyond our control. What has helped has been quiet and gradual and doesn’t sound like it would be helpful at all.
I’ve learned to practice acceptance at the level of sensation and perception, not just in terms of life events or situations. When I stop obsessing over the story of my life, I can narrow my focus to the raw sensory details of being alive.1
Seeing what I’m seeing.
Hearing what I’m hearing.
Feeling what I’m feeling.
Over time, this shift has changed my relationship to my past, my present, and whatever future remains unknown.
I wouldn’t trade my past for some idealized version a child might dream up. I’m grateful for the parenting I was able to cobble together from my young, well-meaning parents, as well as from teachers, friends, writers, poets, artists, and myself. I love the magical moments, the heartbreak, and the unlikely, inevitable, unrepeatable messiness of this amazing life. I can wish some things had been different, or wonder how they might have unfolded, without wishing away the life that emerged from them.
This feels like more than tolerance or acceptance. It feels more like love.
It doesn’t mean condoning what’s wrong with the world or pretending my pain doesn’t exist. It’s an open invitation to step out of the perpetual cycle of analysis and judgment, to pause—if only briefly—the habit of interpreting and controlling every moment.
It means letting myself inhabit the lived texture of my life as it actually unfolds. Sometimes I manage this for only a few seconds, sometimes for minutes, and—on rare days—for longer stretches.
The past tugs at my attention, always ready to be rearranged. The future, too, beckons—posing as a puzzle with a single, elusive solution.
But sensory experience plays by different rules. It happens only in the present, unfolding moment by moment as a shifting blend of sensations and perceptions.
What’s happening right now?
I love exploring the distinction between “making sense” and “sensing directly” in my relationship with my grandchildren.2
Frankie, who will be five soon, struggles to put his face in the water during swim lessons. My mind wants to leap ahead, picturing him as an adult who’s still afraid to go underwater, as if this single moment threatens to dictate the rest of his life.
His two-year-old sister Quinn, meanwhile, is learning words—and also how to whine. I can project years ahead, imagining her forever incapable of asking a question without whining.
When I let those imagined futures take over, they feel urgent, like problems I have to solve immediately.
But when I come back to my senses—to what’s actually playing out in front of me—I hear splashing, laughing, crying. I hear the instructor’s encouraging tone. I see signs of concern and relief on the faces of other parents watching new swimmers. Coming out of my head and into the sensory world also allows me to see Frankie pop up from the water, his face bright with glee, relief, and pride. Back at their house after swimming lessons, I see the instant Quinn recognizes me. She runs over carrying a toy, a crayon, or a book she’s eager to show me.
Freed from rewriting the past or perfecting the future, I find I don’t always need to know what comes next. Sometimes the right response simply appears.
This isn’t indifference. If anything, it’s the opposite.
It draws me more deeply into the unpredictable joys and sorrows of a life I only get to live once, one moment at a time.
What noticing endings makes possible
Most approaches to mindfulness practice emphasize what to do after your attention wanders: simply notice that it has happened, then gently steer it back.
But there’s another way I learned from Shinzen Young: get curious about when a sensory experience ends.3 Instead of waiting for distraction, pick a sight, sound, or body sensation and follow it to its natural conclusion.
Stay with a sound until it fades. Track an exhalation to its endpoint. Watch something move until it leaves your field of view.
The end of a sensory experience doesn’t leave attention with nowhere to go. It positions you to notice what comes next.
That next perception might be a new sound, a shift in light, a bodily sensation, or even a quiet pause where nothing in particular stands out.
You don’t have to go searching for it.
You can practice letting it come to you.
Practicing in this way can make sensory experience more vivid and immediate. Instead of being swept away by interpretation and abstraction, you become fascinated by the continuous play of endings and beginnings happening right now.
Rather than internally shouting NO! at entire chapters of my life, I have more moments of a different kind of recognition: Oh my God, I’m alive. This is what it feels like to be alive. Even the most ordinary moments can feel infused with the miraculous.
You may not be able to rewrite the life behind you or guarantee the one ahead.
But you can become more available to the one that’s unfolding now.
Exercise
This exercise invites you to follow sights, sounds, and sensations to their endings, then notice what arises next.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
When you feel caught in repetitive thinking
While listening to music or spending time outdoors
During an ordinary transition, such as finishing a meal, leaving a room, or ending the workday
