Are you present?

When I first heard about Marina Abramovic’s ambitious art exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art, I was fascinated by her attempt at something that’s becoming increasingly rare in our always-on, ever-connected-but-seldom-connecting culture: presence.

Per her website, this particular “installation” required the following from Abramovic:

All day, every day, from early March until the end of May, 2010, she will sit at a table in the museum’s atrium, in what she describes as a “square of light.” Members of the audience will be invited to join her, one at a time, at the opposite end of the table. There will be no talking, no touching, no overt communication of any kind. Her objective is to achieve a luminous state of being and then transmit it—to engage in what she calls “an energy dialogue” with the audience.

The installation was an astounding success, with 1,400 people sitting in the chair over its three-month run. That event was chronicled in the 2012 documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to encourage you to likewise work toward “an energy dialogue” within your relationships, I would encourage you to consider the role that simple presence plays within your relationships.

Over the next few weeks, that will be the topic on my blog. If you’re wanting to know more about how to be present within your relationships, you can read Chapter 14 of my book, The Stories We Tell Ourselves.

For now, grade yourself: on a scale of one to ten, with one being totally absent and ten being totally engaged, how would you rate your general presence level for all of your relationships?