Busy mind

A beautiful, if quite humid, day has greeted us on this Easter afternoon. The moisture in the air clings to everything, and can make breathing the air oppressive at times, but all that aside, the day is quite beautiful.

I walked along the forests' edge and drank some tea during the coffee hour. A forest in Spring is quite busy by the looks and sounds of things, and today proved no exception. Sometimes I will do an exercise where I ask myself consciously what I hear, what I feel, smell, taste, etc. For whatever reason, performing such an exercise brings the mind to the present moment, and removes it [most times] from whatever else might be mulling in the mind presently. Sometimes I wonder if the brain thinks about harmful subjects because it get's bored, and with the way technology is used by many people today, this can happen more often. Perhaps, perhaps.

Perhaps with so much going on, it becomes habitual to become bored with things. A simple day can be quite good for the mind, but it can cause anxiety in ourselves we feel like we should be doing two or three things instead of one. A need to feel productive, as though we are doing something to accomplish something else. Our modern world seems bent on engraining this ethic in ourselves more and more often.

A little effort in the opposite direction may do some good. To sit down for a few minutes and just sit, or to sip some tea and do nothing else; to walk about in the forest or the city for a few hours, or just to listen to some music while doing nothing else. Many modern people have an extraordinary capacity for multi-tasking, but like with yesterday's post, if we exercise this ability all the time it can compromise the consistency and capacity of our efforts as a whole. We run around all the time with a full cup of tea, and struggle to take on any more when circumstance or sudden interest requires.

So in this regard you and I have a wonderful skill, but we must beware of the consequences that come with that skill. We can work on many projects or levels of thought simultaneously, perhaps in ways our forefathers could not, yet with that ability comes the risk that we shall exercise this ability all the time, and by so doing defuse our strength and attention to a million things, thereby doing them poorly. There is something to be said for the medieval monk who had perhaps a dozen books at most to read, yet read and consider them closely he did. A harmonious balance between multi-tasking and single-minded focus could well provide relief for people who suffer from harmful thoughts and depression as a result of the constant connection to the internet and other people.

This is perhaps one of the great challenges of our time, and perhaps the greatest for the individual. We shall need to keep our wits about is if the pressing social, political, and environmental challenges of the century become as great as some predict. Believe in yourself :).
Frohe Ostern!