Adding Life to Our Days: A Reflection on Presence and Aliveness

Recently, I attended a funeral following a personal bereavement. During the ceremony, the priest said something that stayed with me. I've found myself returning to these words several times since:

“A good life is not about trying to live longer and adding more days to our life, but about adding more life to our days.”

I don't know exactly what made these words resonate with me so much, but they opened up a space for reflection. What does it actually mean to add more life to our days? And how might we do that?

I started thinking about how much of our lives we spend trying to figure things out. We think about what needs to change, what we should do differently, what might make us happier or more fulfilled. We make plans, anticipate the future, revisit the past and sometimes get caught up in an endless conversation with ourselves about how to make life better.

I recognise this in myself, too. How easily I can become absorbed in my thoughts, moving from one thing to another, always trying to make sense of something or find an answer.

And I wonder how much of the time we spend searching for something that might actually be available to us already, in the very moment we are living.

What if we don't need to look so far?

This reflection brought me back to Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and his idea of gateways to presence. One of the things I find particularly interesting in his writing is the invitation to move our attention away from the constant activity of the mind and towards the experience of being here, in this moment.

I find something quite liberating in the possibility that we don't always need to think our way towards happiness or fulfilment. Perhaps we don't need another insight, another explanation or another plan. Perhaps, sometimes, we need to do a little less and allow ourselves to experience a little more.

To slow down. To become still. To inhabit our bodies.

I notice how often my attention is somewhere other than where I actually am. Even when I'm doing something I enjoy, my mind can be busy thinking about what comes next. It is as if I'm sometimes living a little ahead of myself, forgetting that this moment, too, is part of my life.

And perhaps this is where some of the life we are looking for gets lost.

Finding our way back through the body

Tolle describes the body as one of the gateways to the present moment. I find this particularly interesting because it offers such a simple, yet sometimes surprisingly unfamiliar, way of reconnecting with ourselves.

How often do we actually inhabit our bodies? Not think about them, look at them or evaluate them, but experience them from within?

I find that bringing my attention to bodily sensations can offer a welcome interruption to the continuous stream of thoughts. When my attention rests on the simple experience of being in my body, there seems to be less space for the mind to keep producing its familiar stories, worries and mental conversations.

The thoughts don't necessarily disappear, and perhaps they don't need to. But for a moment, I don't have to follow them.

This also resonates with something I value deeply in Gestalt psychotherapy: the possibility of becoming curious about our immediate experience rather than rushing to explain or interpret it. What is happening in me right now? What am I noticing? What do I feel? What becomes available when I allow myself to stay with my experience for a little longer?

Sometimes, I think, we need to create a little more space for simply experiencing life, rather than constantly thinking about it.

A little invitation to experiment

I'd like to share a short practice inspired by Tolle's exploration of the body as a gateway to presence. I invite you to try it, perhaps at a moment when you have a little space to yourself.

Find a comfortable position and, if it feels right, gently close your eyes.

Allow yourself to become still for a moment.

Without looking at your right hand, and without moving it or the rest of your body, bring your attention to it.

Now, quietly ask yourself:

How do I know that my right hand exists?

Rather than looking for an answer in your thoughts, see what happens when you become curious about the question.

Can you sense your hand from within? What do you notice? Perhaps some warmth, tingling, subtle sensations, or simply a sense of its presence.

Stay with it for a little while.

If you wish, extend your attention to other parts of your body. Your left hand, your feet, your legs, your abdomen.

What happens when you allow yourself to experience your body in this way?

There is nothing to achieve and no particular experience you need to have. Just notice.

Perhaps you might find, as I do, that even a brief pause from the activity of the mind can feel like a little breath of fresh air.

Adding life to our days

I keep coming back to those words from the funeral.

Perhaps adding more life to our days doesn't necessarily mean doing more, achieving more, travelling further or constantly searching for something that will make us feel more fulfilled.

Perhaps it can also be found in much smaller, quieter moments. In allowing ourselves to slow down enough to notice the warmth of a cup in our hands, the sensation of our feet touching the ground, the movement of our breath, or the presence of another person beside us.

And perhaps it means allowing things to be as they are, at least for a moment, without immediately trying to change, fix or make sense of them.

This doesn't mean that we stop wanting things, making plans or working towards change. I don't think it is about that. Rather, it is about not postponing our experience of being alive until everything falls into place.

I find this a particularly important reminder in times when our minds seem to be constantly occupied, stimulated and pulled in different directions. Maybe we could all benefit from a little less mental noise and a little more space to simply be.

I don't have a definitive answer to what it means to add more life to our days. But I'm curious about what might become possible if we occasionally stopped searching for it somewhere else and turned towards the experience of being here.

What if, just for a moment, we allowed ourselves to stop figuring life out and started experiencing it a little more?

Author: Aneta Gawin

November, 2026