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Presence has a much larger context than listening, of course. Presence for our own lives is the extent to which we can fully absorb and possess each moment as it occurs. Presence involves the senses as much as the mind, focusing them more on gathering input as it flows, rather than on stopping to process it. This is something that we give more or less of to ourselves and all of our experience, depending on our ability, our awareness, and our will. Spiritual theorists like Eckhart Tolle define enlightenment itself as merely perfect, undistracted presence for an indefinite string of moments.

It turns out that presence, as difficult as it is, is also fundamentally therapeutic to individuals, relationships, and communities. Another spiritual theorist, Stephen Cope, writes of the mysterious ways in which practices of presence and awareness for ourselves and our lives increase our equanimity. Equanimity is a combination of patience, tolerance, and calm. It is our ability to tolerate the bad with the good in our lives. With enough equanimity we can sustain appreciation for the myriad small miracles of each day, and for the great good fortune of being alive in the first place. Another way to think of equanimity is the extent to which we are genuinely mature, genuinely grown up.

As we pay ourselves with presence and awareness, literally "taking" the time to smell the flowers, we somehow increase our store of equanimity. By focusing our presence on ourselves, we naturally tend to increase the store of it we can comfortably share with others. With increasing stores of equanimity, we can get along better with each other.

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