Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present.
The real force here isn't about *feeling* present—it's about the word "commit," which suggests mindfulness requires something close to a vow, a deliberate choice repeated thousands of times. Most people assume presence happens naturally if they just sit quietly, but Kabat-Zinn is saying presence is an *action*, a small rebellion against the mind's constant drift. When you're listening to your child describe their day while mentally replaying an argument from work, you're not absent because you're weak; you're absent because you haven't committed. The moment you decide, genuinely, that *this conversation matters more than that worry*, something shifts.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca