finding calm in chaos
Sometimes a conversation is all it takes for a complete mindset reset.
A recent dinner discussion did exactly that for me. It was one of those topics that seemed rudimentary at first, but as the idea marinated in my head over the course of a few days what I first perceived as simplistic became something much more powerful.
The idea? The only thing that exists is now.
Therefore, it’s the only thing that really matters. The present moment.
Logically, you may have had a similar epiphany before. It’s not a new realization. But until we consider what it truly entails, we cannot embody the idea. What would happen if we really, truly lived breath-to-breath? Experiencing sensation from each of the five senses anew with each passing moment.
A new appreciation for life would emerge and I daresay, life would become quite the trip.
Maybe we’d start to think less about the past - curbing depression - and worry less about the future - easing anxiety.
Maybe this is why when our world becomes too busy, we’re encouraged to take up practices such as meditation to help us to drop into the present moment. Before you let the word “meditation,” scare you into clicking away, allow me to clear up a misconception. Meditation is not the practice of completely clearing the head of any and all thoughts. Blank slate. Clear sky.
Yet this is the most common explanation I hear as for why people don’t have a meditation practice. They cannot clear their minds. Well, welcome to the club. No one can. Not completely, anyway.
All meditation asks for is a singular focal point. Just one singular thought or idea to focus on.
Whether you can achieve this for two minutes, twenty minutes, or two hours is irrelevant. If you focus the mind for 60 seconds and find it peaceful, keep coming back. Meditation is a skill that can be built upon like any other. There’s a world of benefits waiting to emerge from the practice.
Chances are, even from the time you began reading this a few minutes ago, at least one other thought entered your stream of consciousness. Whether you completely disrupted your own thought process by checking your phone, or simply had a passing thought of what’s for dinner later, the meditation broke the second another thought came to you.
In a world where multitasking is applauded and resting is stigmatized, the practice of disrupting our own thought processes has become normalized.
A working lunch, a walking podcast (because getting steps in doesn’t feel productive enough). Whatever it is.
Our attention is often divided by more than two points of focus the entire day, causing an overactive nervous system.
Once the mind is trained to focus on one thought at a time, it becomes easier to meditate on each moment as they unfold.
And when the only thing we have to hold is the moment, the weight of the world can be released.
