If kissing was only about the mechanics of how the lips fit together and tongues moved, then far more of us would qualify as superbly gifted at it. But giving and getting kisses that transcend the routine of everyday existence, kisses that make us feel that life sometimes has real magic to it, requires something more than learning not to bump noses. In that moment when lips connect, it takes being fully present.
For so many people, the complaints they have about their partners make-out skills have a familiar ring：
They rush through everything.
They are just going through the motions.
Their mind is always somewhere else.
It doesn’t seem as if there's any real feeling behind their kisses.
When sharing an intimate moment with your partner, the greatest gift you can give is your full, undivided attention, letting the rest of the world fall away for a while. That's why there's been a million love songs with a lyric that can be summarized with this single statement: This moment, and the two of us, is all there is. That state of being is blissed out happiness. When you're able to focus on nothing else but the shared intimacy of a kiss, it sends the experience to a new level.
Since this is true, why is it difficult for so many of us to achieve this state of heightened, focused awareness? To really experience life in the moment? Of course, all of us have an occasional off day when stress or tiredness causes us to withdraw. But what if feeling disconnected, even from a partner we care about, is a regular pattern? What if feeling disengaged from life has become our life?
Too Distracted
When you kiss your partner, if you sometimes feel distracted or detached you're not alone. We live at a fast-paced, hyper-competitive time in our history, where our individual significance is more and more measured by what we're able to produce, instead of our intrinsic value as human beings. While this does sometimes result in achievement, it comes at the price of underspread isolation, stress, and a diminished ability to enjoy the moment. We feel under siege, and find ourselves constantly worrying about the future, or bemoaning our past mistakes. Because of this state of distraction, we may find it difficult to take any pleasure in the only time that actually exists — this moment.
Complicating things further, technology bombards us with images and sounds that create the illusion of connectedness, but often of a sort that lacks depth or meaning. Being able to connect instantly to anyone or anything habituates us to the idea that more and faster are always better. In a sense, modern life trains us out of our capacity to take things at a natural, human pace. As we substitute an over-abundance of stimulation for deeper bonds with others, many of us find a sense of dissatisfaction nibbling at the edges of our lives, and a feeling that it's all passing by without us fully participating,even when we engage in an act as simple and elegant as kissing our partner, we find ourselves drifting, our minds too often slipping into a state of unfocused auto-pilot. We want to be there for our partner, really be there, but we don't know how a simple tool for reconnecting.So is the answer to find a cave far away from the modern world and unplug from all its conveniences. Probably not. While it's true that the pace and complexity of modern life has increased the cluttered storm of thought that many of us deal with daily, for most of us it's not a practical solution to become a hermit or throw out all of our electronics (although regular mini-vacations away from them can be healthy).
A better response is to have some tools at our disposal that help us shift gears, so that we can slow down when we want to and focus our attention on living in the moment. By using a simple, time-tested technique that's been around for millennia, we can learn to stay fully engaged with the best parts of our life, and derive more meaning and pleasure from the experiences that are really important to us — like sharing an intimate kiss with our partner. That's where the concept of mindfulness comes in.
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