How We Got Here

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: BECOMING PRESENT AGAIN.

Presence had not left us completely.

It had thinned.

For years, we had lived just ahead of ourselves—anticipating, preparing, bracing. Even moments of rest carried a sense of pending responsibility. The present was something to pass through, not inhabit.

Becoming present again required unlearning urgency.

We started noticing ordinary things without attaching purpose to them. The rhythm of footsteps on narrow Parisian streets. The weight of a coffee cup warming our hands. The sound of a language we had learned to understand more by feeling than translation. These details had always been there. We had simply stopped receiving them.

Presence felt unfamiliar at first. Almost indulgent. As if paying attention without productivity was irresponsible. Survival mode had trained us to measure time by usefulness. Presence asked us to experience it instead.

We began listening differently—to others and to ourselves. Conversations were no longer rehearsed internally while they were happening. We allowed pauses. We let silence exist without rushing to fill it. This changed the texture of our interactions. People noticed.

We noticed ourselves too. Emotional responses surfaced sooner, before being filtered through habit or self-protection. Some were uncomfortable. Others were unexpectedly light. Presence removed delay. It made everything more immediate.

France seemed different when we were present. Not romanticized. Just clearer. The same streets, the same systems, the same constraints—but no longer blurred by constant mental projection. We met our environment where it was, not where we wished it would be.

There were moments of grief in this awareness. Presence made us feel what we had postponed. It brought back things we had numbed—loss, longing, tenderness. But it also returned joy in subtle, sustainable forms. Not excitement, but steadiness.

Being present did not mean being satisfied all the time. It meant being honest in real time. Dissatisfaction was no longer buried or dramatized. It was acknowledged and examined. This gave it shape, and shape made it manageable.

We learned that presence is not passive. It requires attention, restraint, and courage. It asks us to stay when instinct says escape. To feel without immediately fixing. To witness without judging.

Becoming present again did not solve everything.

But it reconnected us to ourselves.

And that connection made every next step—however uncertain—feel grounded rather than reactive.