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If someone asks you to think of your “happy place”, where would you pick? For me, it is almost always running my hands through the silky curls atop my youngest son’s head. And fortunately, he is still young enough that I get the chance to do this in real life, not just in my mind. I think of it almost like a meditation. And it goes something like this…
Look at him
He is so beautiful
This moment is so perfect
Wow, I’m here, being with him right now
No, don’t think about it, just do it
Its great
It’s great that I’m here just being
Wait, I’m thinking about it again, I’ve left being to thinking
Think about him, be with him
He is beautiful
I wish I could stay in the moment
And so it goes when I try any form of meditation. I want to be “in the moment”- but I leave the moment to think about being in the moment. Productive? Yes and no.
I used to think meditation was the state of being absent of thought- just being still and void of thought and distraction. But I have learned that’s not really how it works—at least not for me. The real benefit I have learned from meditation is that it’s a place to practice bringing my mind back to the still and the quiet, if only for a second or two at a time. But the act of bringing my mind back itself is a useful skill that I can apply at other times in my day when I get distracted from what I want to be doing.
I walk into a room looking for my keys. I notice a glass on the counter. I start towards the glass and hear myself say “not now- just look for the keys”.
I want to sit at my computer to write, and an email comes through catching my eye- “focus on your writing, the email can wait”.
I’m cooking baking and following a recipe and my kids come to tell me about something non-urgent- I stop and listen to them. Oops- last week that resulted in my forgetting to put the eggs in to the muffin batter. They didn’t turn out so well. I wish I had used meditation.
There are a million distractions around us every single second. The choice to follow them… or not is up to us. Carolyn Myss calls this the act of “calling your spirit home”. Although we have a culturally prescribed proclivity towards doing several things at once, our brain can only process one at a time. Forcing it to do more is not good for us. The way to focus on a single track at a time is simply to practice. So pick your happy spot and visit often.