The Presence Men Really Want

May the boughs of your holidays be tickled with attentive ribbon

Made by ChatGPT, not Uncle Jack.

One man’s presence

Standing in the JCPenney’s at Rosedale Mall, I stared at a wall of appliances like one was going to raise its little appliance arm and shout in a cute electronic voice, “Pick me! Pick me!” The same thing had happened while staring at the earrings.

I had no idea what to get my mother. Adding to my sense of urgency, Uncle Jack was waiting, so I felt the urge to pick something. Ugh. Pick an-y-thing.

In the absence of my father, who’d moved out some years before, Uncle Jack had offered his chauffeuring and financial aid services to get a Christmas gift for my mother.

Don’t fawn over Uncle Jack. This was the same man who once mowed our near-acre of plot of grass a day early, “because it needed it.” Nevermind that I needed the pittance Mother paid me for the task. Uncle Jack may have been a saint that Xmas, but he was more known as my own personal character judge.

To Jack, I was the second failure my mother had raised. I had too much leash and not enough discipline. He loved to do stuff like steal my only source of allowance as a lesson, because he was a miserable sonofabitch (and part-time drunk).

But to me, that Christmas, he was the man I needed. His presence was powerful.

Presence is a somewhat popular term in my network, certainly amongst my clients and coaching pals. Despite this, I often struggle to articulate a clean definition of it.

This much I believe to be true, though: Our relationship with presence seems to resonate, both in our own life and in the lives of others. That much is clear from my experience with Uncle Jack, at least with the benefit of hindsight.

As a kid, however, it was confusing coming from a man I didn’t trust at all. I didn’t have enough insight at that age to understand that conflicting feelings toward one person were normal.

What Uncle Jack was unwittingly teaching me in the most subtle way was that presence can show up and be valuable even despite our worst character defects.

The sneaky value of presence

When the weekly men’s group that I facilitate meets, before we dive into whatever it is we plan to discuss, I lead the guys in a short presence anchoring practice. It’s a little like warming up and stretching to shoot hoops, except instead of our legs, we “warm up” our minds for the conversation.

The guys report that it helps them calm down and transition from their busy days into the intimate space of dialogue. It does the same for me.

It shouldn’t surprise me that in that space, and in the space of my coaching sessions, presence often makes it to the table as a strategy or goal. By simply introducing the word presence, it has this quiet gravitational effect, where men find themselves wanting more of it.

What’s happening? I’m not sure. I think there is already a fundamental value for presence that we each carry, even if we don’t articulate it that way. We know there’s a… something we want, something that feels more like being here in this moment. We just don’t talk about it. We also may not trust ourselves to get there.

That something is presence.

Imagine for a moment that you could press a button on your head that turned off the layers of chattering thoughts, dropping deep into a state of presence with this moment. Imagine you could hold onto that feeling and go about your day that way.

That’s the promise made by stepping into the feeling of presence for even a glimpse. It’s what happens in presence anchoring. For a moment, we imagine what it could feel like to stay anchored.

What happens in reality is that we stay somewhat moored, but to a loosely seated anchor that pulls along the seabed over time. It’s a bit like how dreams can seem so crystal clear when one wakes up, but by noon? We can hardly remember a thing.

In both cases, we might have a desire to return to that feeling, even when we don’t understand it. This is why I think presence teases its way into client conversations and goals.

The hard and easy of presence

There can be something undeniably spooky about all of this.

For the record: I’m allergic to spooky. I don’t just mean ghosts and spirits. Those, too, but I mean most of what falls under the category of metaphysical or spiritual.

No disrespect intended. People I regard highly find value in working with chakras, or they collect crystals, and may even burn sage to clear out evil spirits. It’s fine, and more power to those folks, but none of it’s my jam.

In this case—that of my Uncle Jack and of men in general—we’re talking about a very pedestrian concept of presence. It’s the kind we mean when we say things like, “Your presence was missed at the event last night,” or “Will my presence be required?”

It’s a little more than just being there in body.

There is an even harder part to all of this. For men, presence also happens to be a quality we keep abandoning, seemingly by accident. This is true, even as we each value it when pressed.

Me to any man: Do you feel like you show up with enough presence in your life?

Every Man: Well, I could always use more of it.

When it comes to presence in our own lives, we are the parched horse standing at the trough, not drinking. It’s nearly maddening if one pays close enough attention.

The obvious and begged question is: How does one fix this? The answer for me reads as something of a paradox, doing without doing. Stay with me.

Fixing the problem

At the risk of pissing you off, I’m not certain. Sorry.

Developing presence, as far as I can tell, is different for each of us. That said, I’m willing to share what has worked in my own life and the lives of the men I work with. Just know, your mileage may vary.

It may matter to share that I was diagnosed with ADHD in 1998. What I’m about to share with you is what I’ve stumbled upon as useful for my circumstance, which could serve as a kind of proving ground for the average distracted mind.

It’s simple: practice. Really, it’s all the practices that every expert talks about ad nauseam—exercise, diet, meditation, yadda-yadda-borrrring—but it’s mostly about practicing presence.

For me at least, this became much easier after I started a daily practice of meditation. Not right away, though. The first few years were more a matter of just keeping the habit. It was something closer to ten years before I noticed the glacial pace of change.

But here’s what I’ve come to know more recently. Presence isn’t so much a matter of fixing as it is about remembering.

The truly hard part about remembering is remembering to remember. That’s where each of us is going to need a different strategy. Admittedly, as a neurodivergent, I still sometimes struggle with it.

All of my practices have contributed to unfolding what was underneath the chaos of this neurodivergent mind. Each, in its own way, stemmed the flow of chaos (thoughts, anxiety, restlessness, distractedness) so that the Damon system could better ground itself in a state of presence.

This was not what was going on with my Uncle that Christmas.

What’s possible

For my Uncle Jack, there was a time when he sat in meditation. To what extent that changed his relationship with presence, I’ll never know. He wasn’t much of a sharer. I doubt it had anything to do with how he showed up at JCPenney’s.

That was just him doing what we all are capable of, almost by accident sometimes. We put on a hat and assume a kind of presence for a time. Then we lose it and go back to being what we tend to be otherwise, thirsty for this thing we struggle to identify.

Even after all the dopamine we get, and I’m sure Uncle Jack felt his share that day, we abandon the state of presence just as we came into it, accidentally.

We know there was a something for a moment, and that something felt good, but we don’t know how to get back to it. We might even earmark it for later, like I’ll come back to this when I get some free time, but it never comes.

That said, I do believe it’s possible to find our way back, just not in the way we tend to imagine.

It’s not as much about developing a skill, not fully. We already know how to be present. And it’s not about an act of will, unless we count something like the will to sit in meditation every day. (Remember, that’s just my way.)

It’s more about what we are able to stop doing. That’s the space in which presence can arise.

That’s a really simple, but tough concept to grasp for someone who hasn’t experienced it. I only wish you to know it’s possible. It’s possible to cultivate the conditions that give rise to presence more often.

If I could gift you anything this holiday season—Christmas, as I tend to celebrate it—it would be presence. It would be any percentage more of presence in your own life, and that of the people that matter to you.

Heck. Even my cranky Uncle was able to enjoy this. If we deserve anything, surely we all deserve as much.

Honestly, I wish I could end this essay there, neatly wrapped in a warm bow. You could close this and think, “Yeah, man,” and then just go back to your life without anything changing.

The real invitation on the table is something less clear. It’s the invitation to sort your own way through the paradox. There is a something there worth remembering to remember, and it’s not a matter of will power or just snapping out of it.

It’s a process. I’ve only shared mine with you, and in all its imperfection. I haven’t figured anything out, other than the fact that there is a something.

~Damon