What Do We Mean When We Say “Presence?”

Presence is "in" nowadays. The word flies from one mouth to another, filling the linguistic gap for describing fulfilling and joyous experiences. If you go to a drum circle - it's all about being-present. You join an ecstatic dance group, I bet someone will use the word "presence" a few times during the closing circle. You meet someone at these events and they will tell you how they struggled with being-present for many years, until they had a revelation and became present.

Of course, as my examples suggest, use of the word "presence" coincides with a certain demographic: what I'd like to call "new-age, post-modern urban hippie." MSNBC anchors really don't give a crap about presence nor the Conservative Party of Canada; the world revolves the same in the absence of presence. But the word presence is making an impact in certain circles, at least around me. It is an appealing catch-word. And at the same time, it is more than just a word: it is continuously expanding into a life-guiding value and forming communities around itself devoted to presence.

Words such as presence, words which evolve into values, are the most important signposts of a culture. They shape, guide and even dictate social relations and expectations. And for that reason I want to take a step back and think about "presence" and try to hear, beneath the cacophony of everyday chitchat, what the word tries to describe and express. And, the best way to do that is to approach presence from lived examples - how the word is used.

"Alex, you are not present with me," his lover said. "You always come over after a jam and you are always so tired. You just wanna go to bed."

"D, I'm telling you something important and you keep scrolling on your phone. Be more present!"

"I think one of the Ps of Pomegranate should be presence. As in, when you come to our events, we want you to participate and be present in the art-making process."

"That was a great meeting. I felt like everyone was very present - listening, speaking, and trying to understand each other."

"I always struggled with being-present but then a few years ago, I had an awakening."

I think all of these common uses of the word point towards a similar experience. What I would call "genuinely being-there." And that shouldn't be so surprising since presence is often seen as the way to authenticity and being-genuine. But we'll get to that later.

I think these examples provide us with further clues about presence:

1) A person could be objectively present, meaning, they could physically be in the same room with someone, but still not be present with the other person. So, this use of presence is not limited to physical presence. Scrolling on one's phone or being very tired seem like impediments to being-present with others.

2) If people can be "very" present at a meeting, it means that they could be less present. So then, presence is not a yes/no switch but a spectrum. It's not that one is either present or absent, but more present, less present, more absent, or less absent.

3) For the one who fails to be present, this could become an existential struggle - a hindrance to fulfilling conversations, meaningful relations, and in the grand-scale, a hurdle to living a good life.

So, let's take it from (1). Alex is in the room with his lover, but he is not "present" with her. D is in the room, scrolling on his phone, but he is not present with the other person. So what's lacking in this situation? The other person is not getting something they are expecting and they are demanding more of it. I believe through the word "presence" they are asking for care, attention, participation, and recognition. Alex is too tired. He cannot attend to his lover; he cannot participate in her story; he cannot recognize the significance of what she is trying to convey. She is suffering a lack of care. Same applies to D who is caught up in scrolling. He is unable to attend to the other person. So maybe presence is to bestow one's attention and care on something or someone.

This aligns with (2) as well. If presence is a caring-attention, then it can move in a spectrum. Of course, when one is exhausted they are less likely to be attentive and caring. They are depleted and in need of rest.

If we approach presence from the other end of the spectrum, attention and care still seem plausible. For example, while working on an art-project, when we feel utmost presence on our part, there is a powerful care and attention on the thing we are working on - to the point where the world shrinks and our project becomes our world. Everything else loses its significance and our project grows into the most important thing. Sometimes, we even forget to eat when we are absorbed in our work. Everything falls away and what's in our focus becomes ultra-present, leaving no space for other things to become present.

This brings up an interesting aspect of presence: presence is rarely only "my" presence, and it is never solely "me being present to me." When I write a piece, when Alex plays a song, when Tan is working on a film, the creator is kind of absent in the process. We do not come back to ourselves, to a self-conscious recognition of ourselves. Rather, we are absorbed into the process. We try to figure out what is best for the work itself. Our absence allows the presence of words filling the page, tunes reverberating, images flowing one after another. My attention is caught up in the piece I am writing. It is not on me. I am rather fallen away from myself into the work. Similarly, when doing improvised acting, one does not think about what "she" is gonna say. She merges with the scene. She participates in the process of something coming-to-be, that something being the scene. If the actor were to recognize herself, self-consciously, then she would be stuck and no words would flow out of her. That's rather what happens when we feel anxious, frozen, stuck - stage-freight! We have to be absorbed in an activity, a creative process to be present. In other words, we need to be absent to ourselves to be present.

So then, the most fulfilling types of presence - the presence you feel in amazing sex or in non-stop, ecstatic dance - is one pervaded by absence: the absence of you as a self-conscious being. This is not the presence of your self as a self distinct from the world but rather a self absorbed into the world, into a meaningful activity where you can't really tell where you end and the world begins, where you end and the other person begins.

Sex ceases to be fun and pleasurable when we become present to ourselves, when we come to recognize ourselves as a distinct self. Those are the moments when men have thoughts like, "don't cum now. Don't cum now!" We become present in the sense that we come to an awareness of "being-me." We become present to ourselves and simultaneously become absent from the activity. The activity ceases to be shared, we get pulled out of it, and sex loses its pleasure.

This is why I offered the term "genuinely being-there" since this term avoids absence/presence dualism and opposition. I can genuinely be with someone even in their physical absence. In sports this happens often. Last week, I was watching a football game and a player broke his arm after a bad fall. He was carted off and brought to the nearest hospital. Following his injury, I saw a difference on the pitch. His teammates played with a new intensity and a renewed vigour. They won the match and each player dedicated the victory to their injured teammate after the game. The injured player was physically absent, yet he was still genuinely there with his team. And he wasn't there in spirit, if by spirit we understand something ethereal. He was there in spirit and flesh - in the flesh of his teammates. His teammates ran faster, pressed harder, and won the ball more often. Seeing their teammate injure himself while trying to score a goal pushed players to work harder and win the game. "This win is for Edin," they all said after the game. His injury, his physical absence on the pitch, resulted in a dominating presence.

And now, (3): Struggle with being-present. Usually this means an inability to be in the moment - here-and-now. The struggle is often associated with anxious thoughts and being snatched away from the moment by worries about what might or might not happen. When someone is lost in one of these troublesome, anxious thoughts, their blank faces and empty eyes reveal their absence. Their gaze is kind of turned inwards, chasing a thought that has nothing to do with what's in front of them. They are absent in the sense that they are lost in an imagined scenario or an event that had happened in the past. Their attention wavers and they struggle to stay-with what's happening around them. They are not genuinely there since something else occupies them. Their worry steals away from their care and attention for what's happening here and now. Once again, presence seems to be an issue of attention and care.

Presence is a pretty empty word compared to care and attention. Presence lacks human warmth whereas words like care and attention already inspire warmth and camaraderie. This might be just me, but I think presence calls something divine like the omni-present God. If you were to say, "she is a very present person," I imagine someone who intently and quietly listens, but not someone who comes to my help when I need it. Presence, the mere word, does not inspire reciprocity like attention and care. Presence does not help you move into a new apartment, carrying your furniture with you three stories up. Care, on the other hand, really allows things to flourish: it opens up new possibilities. If you care for something you get involved with it, you engage with it. Similarly, attention animates the world. It allows project to come to fruition. It allows people to be people. When I attend to someone, they open up and share their life with me and when they attend to me, I do the same.

This could be just me but I believe people who use the word presence often have a desire to be present and expect others to be present but they don't pull their sleeves up and join the hard work. Presence has a stillness to it which doesn't touch the nitty-gritty activity of the world. Once again, this reminds me of the omni-present yet absent God who created the world and then just sat back and watched it go to hell. I'd rather like you to be genuinely there, dancing, playing, attending, caring, resisting - finding yourself absorbed in meaningful activities with others. Not from the distance of presence but the closeness of genuinely being-there with others.

D - 16/8/22