Mindfulness is not a forcing of the present moment. It is not positive thinking, and it is not the delusion that everything occurring is somehow joyous. It is something far simpler and more radical than either of those: seeing things as they actually are, before the mind has had a chance to label them.
At its deepest level — prior to the stories we construct around experience — this moment is neutral. It is our judgments of positive and negative that create the weight we carry. Mindfulness is the practice of meeting what is happening with pure attention, not because it deserves our approval, but because it is happening and therefore worthy of our presence.
Something interesting occurs when we practice this way. The moments we savor become more vivid — met fully rather than grasped at. The moments of difficulty lose some of their tyranny — seen clearly rather than resisted or collapsed into. The mind, no longer constantly at war with experience, begins to feel less like a jailer and more like a friend.