I only focus on present thoughts & feelings.

Attention is not a spotlight you can bolt down. It is a dog off the lead.

It goes to Thursday. It goes back to something somebody said in 2019. It goes to a noise in the kitchen. This happens to everybody who has ever tried it, including the people who teach it for a living.

The return is the whole practice. Not the staying — the coming back, done thirty times in ten minutes without irritation, which is thirty repetitions rather than one long failure.

And the present, when you land in it, is usually far more manageable than either direction you were travelling. Right now there is a chair, some light, and a body sitting in it.