Be Here Now
An effort to not be “forever elsewhere,” could become the simple movement you’ve known all along you needed.
After a night of weird, vivid dreams about losing all the hair from only the top portion of my head, while sporting my newly-launched line of hats and t-shirts with the #BeHereNow slogan, I find myself noticing the blurred edges where that meets reality. Because, though my hair seems just fine, I really have been contemplating the way my “Be Here Now” mantra has been guiding me to be more present in everyday life, and I want to share the simplicity of that more with you.
My kids have 13 days of school left (the countdown is on, people!), and we are all ready for it. But this brings with changes to both my work structure (studio hours go way down) and more intensity in the battle against screens. Even though we are a family who loves the outdoors, habits, relentlessly, tend to yank us in the direction of devices.
I just started reading The Anxious Generation by
, a social psychologist whose research declares the significant rise in anxiety and depression in young people is not just correlated with but caused by the adoption of smart phones + social media + a lack of unsupervised play and childhood independence. He quotes MIT professor Sherry Turkle in describing people with smartphones as being, “forever elsewhere,” and expects this to become more so with the new AI boom and virtual goggles showing up in the Apple Store. I won’t get further into the solutions he offers (go read his book!), but recognizing that this is happening means we can do something about it.And for me, that starts with myself. My art practice already focuses on living with intention, which is really just paying more attention and making purposeful choices, rather than getting caught up in a reactive lifestyle. It can be as simple as looking up more to observe the sky, taking notice of what birds you see flying around, what sounds you hear right now, or what kind of car is driving behind you. It is about moving through your day (thus life) how you choose to based on what really matters to you, rather than react to outside influences. Of course, it’s not a perfection thing— life happens, but in my experience so far this year, I’ve found it gets easier and more frequent with practice.
I literally tell myself, “Be here now, Erin.” to check in and give myself permission to break the habit of reaching for my phone without due reason, scrolling mindlessly, or to let go of feeling like I’m missing out if I’m not watching or responding to something other people are talking about right away.
By Being HERE Now, you gift yourself precious time for precious things, people, and experiences, and you create better memories because you weren’t distracted in their making.
Then in the act of painting, I strive to express all of that with my brush, so that you can not only view the finished piece, but feel her message and continue carrying on a dialogue with it, where your own stories merge in and take hold. In this way, you can find comfort in a painting that resonates with you, feel familiarity, and realize that your own meaningful journey has been acknowledged and even understood.
Often times we are drawn to a particular artwork and don’t really know why, but it is because the pieces of the artist that went into the painting overlaps something deep within ourselves. There is a shared experience on some leave that forms the emotive link.
For any of this to happen, we must be present where we are so as not to miss what is real, right in front of us, in this moment.