Stop thinking!

Spring in the Japanese Garden

So how's this respite working for you? Are you relaxed? Are you using your time wisely? Have you finished all those chores you planned? No?

It's not easy, this being at home all the time, maybe alone, maybe with a few others. It's hard to break old habits. I still watch too much news, and though I continually promise myself, I'm not meditating every day (though yoga three times a week helps).

And no matter how often I remind myself to just enjoy the silence and be, my mind doesn't give up. For instance, earlier this afternoon I was eating ice cream. The condo was quiet and I wasn't, for a change, multitasking—reading or listening or watching something while eating. I was just slowly eating ice cream, focusing on the rich, chocolaty taste, how it felt in my mouth, feeling the cold slide down my throat. I was being mindful, and for awhile I succeeded. But my thoughts prevailed.

Minds love to think and think and think. They don't care what they think, they just have to be running words through your head; memories, ideas, to dos, whatever. You mind doesn't care what nonsense it generates, it just wants to keep moving.

Because your mind likes to be in control. And much of the time that control leads us to wanting more. More ice cream, more news, more Facebook, more anything that will let us off the hook and take us away from the present moment.

And the present, the right now in the middle of the great pause, is a gift we aren't likely to see again. What we do with it, even if that's only mindfully eating ice cream, is important.

Sadly, I've wasted much of it. My screen time is up; I've been binge watching when I should be reading. I've been reading when I should be cleaning my closet. And I've been cleaning my closet when I should be writing. Or learning Spanish or improving my forgotten French. My oh so persistent mind demands it.

But the point is, we don't have to listen to those demands. We can silence them for a moment or two, or more, and turn inward to discover who we are, and how we want to be in this world that our minds are constantly creating.

As usual, a poet says it best:

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken in the race of days.

—John O'Donahue (Irish poet 1956–2008)