Being able to prepare for the future is one of the remarkable abilities we have as human beings.
We can think ahead and plan for things that haven’t happened yet.
Somewhere along the way, we seem to have come to take it for granted that preparing for the future is the sensible thing to do.
But this same ability can also take us away from the present. Without even realizing it, we may spend our time thinking and worrying about a future that hasn’t arrived, losing touch with what’s actually happening right in front of us.
Seeing reality as it is.
For me, that’s what living in the present has come to mean.
I think it’s been about four months since I started practicing this.
At first, I would deliberately stop and remind myself to look at what was actually happening. I began to realize how much of what I’d taken for reality was actually my own interpretation. It wasn’t easy to tell the two apart.
Over time, I’ve become better at distinguishing what is actually happening from my own interpretations and responding more naturally to what’s in front of me.
Interestingly, the six hours or so from eight this morning until shortly after two felt like a little snapshot of how this practice had become part of my everyday life.
So I thought I’d write down how those hours unfolded.
A Morning at Home
This morning, I got up as usual, boiled some eggs for my husband, cut up an apple, and left everything on the dining table before heading to the cafe.
The day before had been a long one. I’d spent seven hours driving on the highway to visit my eldest daughter and back. I hadn’t arrived home until nearly ten at night, and after soaking in a warm bath, I’d gone straight to bed.
I’d only meant to stay for a little while, but I was having so much fun writing that I stayed longer, slowly drinking my hot Americano.
After two hours at the cafe, I came home feeling a little tired.
I took a chilled sheet mask out of the refrigerator and put it over my face. The cool feeling was nice.
I preheated my little toaster oven and took some sliced bread out of the freezer.
“Do you want some cinnamon toast?”
My daughter thought for a moment.
“I want an egg sandwich for breakfast.”
“There are two boiled eggs left, so we can use them. I’ve got some butter lettuce. Want some in yours?”
“Not this time.”
“Even easier without it.”
I peeled the eggs while my daughter opened a new jar of mayonnaise.
I added a little salt and told her to put in as much mayonnaise as she wanted and mix it herself.
“Is this enough?” she said to herself as she added mayonnaise and stirred it into the eggs.
She tasted the mixture.
“Mm, that’s good.”
She put the mayonnaise back in the refrigerator.
I took the toasted bread out of the oven and told her to make her own sandwich. She spread the egg mixture over the toast and started eating.
Crunch, crunch.
I liked the crisp sound as she bit into her sandwich, standing by the kitchen island.
I ate mine standing beside her for a little while, but then I felt like sitting down. I moved over to the sofa and finished my toast slowly.
I feel like lying down for a bit.
I set a fifteen-minute timer on my phone and lay down on my bed. A little later, my daughter came in and lay down beside me.
“I’m going to save that JLPT N1 book I bought at the bookstore for when I actually study for the exam.”
I laughed.
“Oh, we’re so alike! You know that English copywork book I bought? It’s still sitting there. When I bought it, I wanted to start using it for my own project right away. But once I brought it home, I realized there was no need to do anything with it just yet. Sounds like you’ve come to the same conclusion.”
“I realized I could just record my voice in PowerPoint and do the assignment that way.”
I laughed again.
“Right. You could just do the assignment the easy way, but you were thinking you’d use the opportunity to study properly. Remember what I said? It’s like digging a whole well just because you want a glass of water.”
Then my daughter asked, “Do you want to go to that cafe? I want to watch some online lectures.”
“Oh, so it’s a good place for you to study. By the way, how’s your foot?”
“It’s much better. I slept with my foot propped up on a cushion, so I don’t think I need to see a doctor after all.”
My daughter had injured her foot and worn a splint for a month. She’d had it removed four days ago and had been doing fine until her foot started bothering her again two days ago. The doctor had told her to come back in a month, but we’d planned to go today instead.
My daughter smiled and said, “I walked five laps around the field at the middle school near our apartment last night.”
“Oh, you did? Do you want to leave as soon as I finish my fifteen-minute rest, or would you rather have lunch at home first?”
She immediately said she wanted to go right away and left the room to get ready.
Lunch in Thirty Minutes
“Oh! You startled me!”
I’d just gotten out of bed and was walking into the bathroom when I nearly bumped into my husband coming out of his study.
Our bathroom has two doors, one leading to our bedroom and the other to his study.
“I was going to take a shower. You go first.”
He was standing there in his underwear. He smiled, stepped into our bedroom, and closed the bathroom door behind him.
A little later, I opened the bathroom door on the study side and found him still sitting in his chair in his underwear, looking at his phone.
“We’re going out…”
He answered rather hurriedly.
“My lunch plans just got canceled. I need to eat before I go out…”
“Can you eat a little early? There’s some seaweed soup. I can just heat it up.”
He liked the idea.
I went into the kitchen, put on my headphones, and started moving around to some upbeat music.
I’d originally been thinking of making pan-fried shiitake mushrooms stuffed with pork for lunch, so I’d taken some ground pork out of the freezer to thaw. I put it into the refrigerator instead. I could make that for dinner.
I took some frozen multigrain rice out of the freezer.
My husband doesn’t like packaged instant rice. He prefers the multigrain rice I cook in our rice cooker. Making a fresh batch would take more time, so I decided to use the rice I’d frozen earlier.
I heated it up in the microwave, but there didn’t seem to be enough for me as well. So I heated up a pack of instant rice and mixed it in.
I took the seaweed soup out of the refrigerator and started heating it. Then I washed some cabbage and put it in the steamer. I also took three salted yellow croakers out of the freezer and pan-fried them in a little olive oil.
“Oh, it’s all ready in thirty minutes.”
I smiled as I looked at the time on my phone.
My husband came to the table with both hands on his belly.
“Look! My belly’s gone down quite a bit, hasn’t it? I’ve lost five kilos.”
“Oh, yeah, it has!” I said, smiling.
Then he started talking about a work issue that had gotten him worked up. He had something to deal with after lunch.
He ate quickly, his spoon clinking against the bowl, as if he were fueling up for what was ahead.
My daughter came into the kitchen and looked at the food.
“I’ll eat too,” she said.
Her original plan had been to go to the cafe, come home for lunch, and then head to her afternoon class. Then, when she saw me preparing lunch for her dad, she’d thought she might buy something to eat after going to the cafe.
But now she wanted to eat with her dad.
I’d given my husband most of the rice I’d mixed together and kept a little for myself. I was going to put it in a large bowl and add some seaweed soup when I asked my daughter,
“Do you want this, or should I heat up another pack of instant rice?”
“I’ll have this,” she said.
So I ladled some seaweed soup over the rice. She ate it with the other dishes.
She’s really enjoying her lunch.
As I watched the two of them eat, I started making a dipping sauce.
I’d given my husband some Korean soup soy sauce for his steamed cabbage. My daughter was happy eating the cabbage plain, but my son liked dipping his in a sweet-and-tangy gochujang sauce.
I took some gochujang and vinegar out of the refrigerator, added a little sugar and oligosaccharide syrup, and mixed everything together with a spoon. It only took a moment to make a fresh batch of the sauce he liked.
I tasted it.
Just right.
On the Way to the Cafe
My husband left before noon, and my daughter and I left the apartment around twelve thirty.
“Oh, it’s cold!”
My daughter said she was glad she’d brought her jacket.
“Yeah, our apartment must get plenty of sunlight. It’s chilly out here. Yesterday was hot, and today it’s cold. The weather keeps changing.”
“Home-cooked food really is delicious.”
“Yeah, you really seemed to enjoy it.”
We laughed as we drove toward the cafe.
“No need to turn on the navigation on my phone.”
“Do you know the way?”
“Yeah. I’ve memorized it.”
As we drove out of our apartment complex, my daughter asked, “Would three hours at the cafe be too long?”
“We’ll just see how it goes once we’re there.”
“So we’re just going to keep changing our minds?”
“We can decide what to do when the time comes.”
We passed the cafe I visit every morning, and a little farther along, we came to a screen golf practice center.
“Have you been there?” my daughter asked.
“Yeah. It costs just 10,000 won, and you can practice for as long as you like. Your dad goes there when he wants to practice. The golf pro there wasn’t really a good fit for me, though, so I started taking lessons at the screen golf practice center next to the library instead.”
“Oh, I see.”
“But I’m not taking lessons anymore, am I? So I won’t be going back. Oh, wait, I can still go there to practice on my own until next February. Maybe I will.”
My daughter laughed.
“So, just going with the flow?”
I burst out laughing.
“Oh, I like that! Going with the flow… just seeing how things unfold.”
“Or more like, whatever happens, happens?” she said, laughing.
“Haha! I guess it can sound like that, too.”
We both laughed.
A little later, we turned right off the main road into the smaller street leading to the cafe.
“When my phone’s navigation first took me this way, it was so easy. But when we came back a few months later, it sent us along a different road. Remember that steep hill where we had to stop at the traffic light? I was a little nervous starting uphill again.”
“Yeah, I was nervous too.”
“I thought maybe the traffic signals had changed. But then I saw another car taking this road, so I tried it too. And look, there’s a truck following us now. This way is definitely the easiest. I just have to be careful when turning right here because it’s hard to see cars coming from the side.”
We laughed and parked in front of the cafe.
At the Cafe
“Exactly fifteen minutes. Just as I expected,” my daughter said, looking at the small sign outside the entrance.
“Oh, they’ve added Korean to the sign. It used to have only Japanese.”
“Oh, really?”
While she took a photo of the little sign, I took a photo of the whole cafe from an angle I liked.
We’d collected enough coupons for a free Americano but hadn’t used them yet. Today, we finally used them for one drink and paid for the other.
“I feel like having something hot today.”
Three days earlier, we’d both ordered iced decaf Americanos at this cafe. Today, my daughter ordered the same, but I chose a hot one.
My daughter listened to her online lectures while I opened my laptop and began writing this piece.
The cafe had been quiet when we arrived, but as it got closer to two in the afternoon, it gradually became noisier.
“Ah…”
At the sound of my daughter’s voice, we looked at each other.
“Just tell me if you want to leave.”
“Okay.”
She went back to listening to her lecture, and I went back to writing.
And then I finished this piece.
“Aren’t you hungry?” my daughter asked.
“Shall we go? I’m done writing.”
“I watched three lectures, too.”
“Oh, didn’t you say you watched two last time?”
“Yeah.”
“How long have we been here?”
“An hour and a half.”
“Same as last time, then.”
We laughed as we left the cafe.
What I Began to Notice
As I wrote about those six hours, I was surprised by how naturally one small choice flowed into another.
These might seem like insignificant moments in an ordinary day. But in each one, I could sense what I wanted and simply act on it.
Before I started practicing seeing reality as it is, I often couldn’t see what was actually happening right in front of me.
I didn’t even think to ask myself what I wanted at that moment.
What I took for reality had become something much larger. It was a mixture of what was actually happening and all the interpretations, worries, and anxieties I’d added to it.
Within that reality I’d created in my mind, I would try to figure out the right way to act. I did what I thought would make life easier for my family or solve problems more quickly. I also encouraged my family to do the same.
For decades, I believed that was simply reality and the natural way to respond to it. I never once questioned it. Yet things didn’t really improve, and as I continued worrying about my family, I gradually lost sight of what I wanted.
Interestingly, over those months, my daughter had been reading what I wrote about this practice and had begun trying it in her own way, too.
As I continued practicing, I began to notice how naturally an ordinary day could unfold, and how comfortable that felt.
My daily routine was much the same, but the small choices I made in response to what was happening kept changing, making everyday life feel a little different and more interesting.
What is actually happening right in front of me?
How much of it is what I can see, and how much is what I’ve added in my own mind?
It’s funny to think how difficult it was for me to tell the two apart at first.
