There are books on meditation, courses, and YouTube guru videos that have long tried to get us to settle our minds and focus. Mindfulness is a category in the bookstore; a quick search in the app stores shows over 50 meditation apps. Fitting that a device designed to make your mind flinch every 7 seconds wants to sell you apps to calm it. Today let's talk about mindfulness and living in the moment, which many of us seek. Let's explore the challenge of living in the moment when you live in a world designed around time.

-

Heidi Julavits is a writer and professor and is writing a story about living in the moment for The Guardian this weekend. The story is the prompt I used to write my thoughts on my internal struggle with mindfulness and time. Julavits story was so good I went up and bought one of her books. The story opens with a description of the artist Marina Abramovic’s performance art piece called “The Artist Is Present,” where Abramovic sat in a chair and stared into the eyes of strangers for over 700 hours. No words, two people sitting across from each other, the visitor with a thousand curious thoughts staring into the eyes of a performance artist who wanted to be present for each visitor. 

Part performance art and part thought project, we are interested in settling our minds. Eckhart Tolle, another mindfulness expert, wrote The Power of Now and A New Earth; both books have sold millions of copies. Tolle is a master of taking a complex topic and associating it with relatable ideas, the concepts of living in the now fight with our calendars, clocks, and schedules every minute of every day. Julavits talks about this and compares mindfulness to a workout and a performance of something that can be improved. Guess what? If you can turn mindfulness into a score-based metric, you can sell a lot of stuff to help you improve your score.

There is a positive case for rumination. Julavits calls it "drumination" and says it can help you find solutions if used as a warning. For many of us, rumination does not lead to a solution, and when it goes from warning to annoying, a new strategy may be necessary.  

Many of the questions Julavits brings up, and the story's direction made sense to me. Can we reach for mindfulness and living in the moment while, at the same time, practicing self-discipline, accomplishing goals, meeting deadlines, and showing up on time? The story also prompted another thought – what is at the root of our need to be mindful in the first place? Especially now, when everything is moving toward chasing the next shiny thing. 

Are we running toward clarity of mind, of a more peaceful existence within our environments, to better ourselves? Or do we want the noise to stop, the constant distractions, the intensity of situations to reduce? Practicing mindfulness, contemplation, and being present more often is a good goal. This is something you can work on and use when it makes sense to settle and improve your mind. If you are running from noise and distractions that have overwhelmed you, mindfulness might help to cover, but it's a Band-Aid. Coming to terms with what you are running from and doing the work to improve is as important as mindfulness. Remember to put that on your calendar!

A few minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

If you like Wes Anderson movies, watch how one of his Production Designers creates incredible sets from some of Anderson's movies.

Just Breathe.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

-

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

A few minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

O/X