Beginning Again

Things disappear in New York—like umbrellas, loose change, and bicycles. Even entire buildings can be swallowed up, sucked into the vortex of urban development.

I was walking downtown, for instance, in a neighborhood I’m very familiar with but hadn’t been to in some time. A building in the middle of the block had been demolished since I had been there last, with nothing left of it but an open construction pit surrounded by a chain link fence. Everything else about the block was the same, but like chalk suddenly erased from a blackboard, I couldn’t summon any memory of what had been there before.

It was unsettling, like the feeling I used to have after taking drugs, where I could feel individual brain cells, like small balloons, rising up out of the mushy swamp of my mind into the air where, one by one, they would pop, leaving fewer and fewer for me to work with.

As I stood there staring at the construction site, lamenting the rise and fall of so many buildings in New York, rummaging through a Rolodex in my mind for even the slightest hint, no matter how fuzzy, of the building that used to be there, I remembered the instruction of a meditation teacher I had recently taken a workshop with: begin again.

The instruction was in relation to being mindful of my breath, moving in and out, and to focus as closely as possible on taking just one breath, following the air in through the nostrils, into the chest and abdomen, and letting it back out. Then doing it all over again, one breath at a time.

During this process, it was described as a virtual certainty that my mind would wander, going off on a million tangents, but that as soon as I noticed my attention had been captured by something other than my breath, I could bring it back and begin again.

Beginning again, she said, was a good thing, and I could do it hundreds of times, if necessary.

So, standing in front of the construction site, I took a deep breath, mindful of the air going in and the air coming out. I tried to focus on the breath only, going in and out a couple of times more. I could feel my heart rate begin to slow, and while there didn’t seem to be any sudden regeneration of the brain cells I’d sacrificed so many years before, all in the name of “having a good time,” I did feel clearer, calmer.

Continuing down the block, I did turn back once more to look at the construction site and, like a Polaroid picture slowly developing, I was able to see just the outline of the building that was now gone, followed by a more detailed image of the façade, and finally a full reconstruction in my mind.

Meditation has been helpful like that for me, even in small doses. A deep breath here, an exhalation there, and I’m better able to focus on what’s in front of me.

I’ve always thought of meditation as fixed in time, like the 25 minutes or so I allot to it before rushing off to work, or some other time specifically set aside. But I’m finding more and more that it is portable—as portable as the next breath—and all I need to do when I am finished is to begin again.

Buildings disappear all the time. And, before you know it, another one has taken its place. In and out, like breath.