mindfulness

Empty Your Day

10/26/2018 by John 1 Comment

For the first time in many weeks, I have an empty day in front of me. Empty days frighten me. I am afraid I will begin the day with a sense of hope and promise about all I will get done and that I will end the day being disappointed with myself for not doing it. But empty days can also be my best days. They can fill me up at times when I feel drained of vitality.

The problem with empty days occurs when I let the glowing rectangles I’ve surrounded myself with take charge. I go there to “get something done”. But in the midst of accomplishing my task and seemingly without my knowing it, I am led to all sorts of places I never knew I wanted to go. When I get there I often feel frazzled, and the task I set out to do is left undone. The rectangles fill the time, but they rarely fill me.

But why do I feel the need to do so much anyway? Why not be content to let the day remain empty? An empty day need not mean an unfulfilling day. To have an empty day allows the space to be filled with whatever comes my way. The urge to follow that birdsong. Time to just sit and watch the play of light across the landscape. Naps. Naps are good.

The best kind of empty days are the ones when I leave the screens tucked away out of sight, allowing my mind to wander free of their influences. It is not easy to intentionally set out to have an empty day. It is not easy to let go of the urge to be “productive”. But often it is what is needed to recharge, to become full again.

Are you feeling depleted? See if you can fill yourself up by emptying your day. You can start by turning off that screen you’re looking at right now.

What I Know

09/13/2018 by John Leave a Comment

This is what I know.

I know that opening up the New York Times today will make me angry and sad but I will probably do it anyway. Like when I was a kid on the farm and every now and then I just had to touch the electric fence. Sometimes I guess I need to feel the pain.

I know that I am happier when I run more than is probably healthy for me on more days of the week than I should. I know this, but I still have a hard time getting out the door most days.

Why does it seem easier to do what I know is bad for me than to do what I know is good for me?

The things that I know are not good for me are often the quick and easy fix and they involve an external input. They are a shot of strong espresso when I’m feeling drowsy. They will jolt me into a temporary state of bliss, but the inevitable crash will leave me feeling more lethargic than before.

Conversely, the things I know are good for me require internal output from me. They ask me to give something of myself. Maybe it’s sitting down and writing uninterrupted for a period of time, making the effort to prepare my own meals, or getting out for that run even when the wind is howling and the rain is pelting down.

Here is something else that I know.

You get back what you put in.

It is a fundamental law of nature. Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. They are transformed. If I give something of myself, I will get something in return.

What do you know?

What will you do with it?

There Is Only This Moment

08/09/2018 by John 1 Comment

This is not New Zealand. This is the Deschutes River in Oregon.

I was walking down the street on a summer day, with the heat of the sun radiating off the broken concrete street. I noticed the feel of my feet contacting the pavement and the waves of sensation created by that encounter radiating up through my body. I felt each breath of air entering and leaving my nostrils, and noticed that I was noticing these things. For a few minutes, possibly only seconds, I lived in the awareness that there is only this moment. All else past and future was only an illusion.

I had recently returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest with friends and family. I was in the readjustment period following a nice vacation and the transition back into the routine of home. I was reminiscing about the trip, trying to make it real again when it hit me that it was truly over and could never be experienced again. I felt as if it had never really happened at all.

Of course, it had occurred. I had felt the cold waters of the Deschutes River as I drifted down it on my inflatable sleeping pad. I had kayaked Puget Sound, watching seals poke their heads out from the dark blue-grey waters to have a peek at us awkward skinny armed and big flippered creatures. But I knew that all that had passed. It was no more real any more than adventure I could conjurer in my imagination.

There is no sadness in this, only freedom. There is little value in revisiting the past other than to remember the lessons we learned and appreciate the opportunities we have experienced. It is so easy to become lost in our past, whether it be reliving good times or obsessing over the wrongs we feel have been perpetrated against us or the mistakes we have made. But this is a form of prison. We cannot change what has already occurred, only grow from it and move forward. We are the accumulation of our past experiences but we don’t get to decide which parts to embrace and which to ignore; we must embrace them all.

Realizing that the present is all we have provides us the freedom to do whatever we choose, unshackled by what has occurred before. We do not have to be what we have been. That person no longer exists. Each breath we take, each morsel of food we ingest, each thought we have and action we take changes us. We are never the same person we once were and this is a beautiful thing.

Based on a journal entry from 7.22.14