Think of a film so gripping that you forgot you were in a cinema. Your heart raced. Your hands gripped the seat. For two hours you were not there. Only the story was.

Life does this to us all day. An argument, a piece of news, a worry about money: we fall into it so completely that there is no one left to notice. The tradition calls this identification. You do not have a worry. For those minutes, you are the worry.

Identification is the main way we fall asleep, and it is sneaky, because it feels like caring. Surely if something upsets me, I should be absorbed in it? But it works the other way. When you are lost in an event, you cannot see it clearly and you cannot respond to it well. You can only react.

The answer is not to stop caring. It is to keep one part of you in the seat while the film plays. You can feel everything and still know you are in a cinema.

Watch for the moment you come back. Suddenly you notice you have been arguing in your head for ten minutes with someone who is not even in the room. That moment of noticing is not failure. It is you, returning.