Spending time for a few minutes each day being awake and noticing is a good way to begin the practice of being present. It is a good way to begin to expand one's idea of what constitutes a meaningful life. And yet more than this is needed if one is to truly embrace what IS, and to be 'present in the present'. What is needed is the greater opening of the heart to the one Self that exists within all.
This perception of Unity and Oneness has an opportunity to grow at any moment in which we interact with another soul. It is nourished by an absence of judgment and by a willingness to be open to the deeper levels of who that other might be. Such openness comes from a state of innocence and of childlike grace. It comes from knowing that the 'other' is part of the same 'ALL THAT IS' as oneself, therefore of one Heart, one Breath, one Life.
The gift of being present as it applies to relationships is that it brings love to every interaction, no matter how small or insignificant. It brings the Divine into every perception, no matter how ordinary. And it brings gratitude into each moment as it unfolds.
As a sense of being present deepens and one's capacity to 'notice' flowers, the deep richness of life and of love can be found everywhere and separation nowhere. In this state, one senses only the One who lives within all. One feels the Essence within every other. Here, consciousness can only affirm the greater life of which it is a part:
I Am and You Are. We are both of the stars and of the dust of the earth. We are both of the rocks and of the sandy shores. We are water and we are sky; we are earth, and we are air. We are the Breath that life breathes through Itself, in a single and continuous song of Creation.