“Our minds are cavernous, chaotic places. So much courses through them that has little to do with what is right in front of our eyes. We end up seeming ungrateful to where are. Someone is telling us an important story, and not from any evil, just from the difficulty of having to manage the entity called ‘I’, we digest some regret or other instead. We are at a beautiful location, but we can barely take in the vegetation and the extraordinary views, so fixated are we on an event that will occur in six months time. We need to be prepared for the weird way in which we align with the world and not berate ourselves unduly for our difficulties at doing justice to where our bodies and minds happen to be. We should be ready for this disloyalty in other people too – at moments when they look strangely worried at a party we’ve laid on or don’t seem to be listening to a story we are telling them. They too may just be experiencing some of the major difficulties of being in the present. Like us, they’ll probably enjoy our encounter with us so much more when the present has safely given way to memory.”