Yes, you read that right.
It's something I've been thing about for some time now. In a world full of distractions, choices and endless options for occupying oneself from one second to the next.
I often find myself unable to focus on one form of entertainment at once. Tell me I'm not the only one who can be caught watching hater Netflix boxset I'm bingeing on currently, whilst at the same time, flicking through Facebook posts and responding to Whatsapp messages. All. At. once. I often feel that I'm quite capable of taking all those in well. But then I'm often to be found rewinding said TV series when something profound happens and I admit I hadn't quite caught it or the lead up to it, or why it is profound in the first place.
There is often so much out there that we feel we are missing out on a lot if we don't have our fingers, quite literally on the button, for each new update.
In recent times, we have also experienced an epidemic of anxiety and depression that more and more research is linking to our excessive use of social media and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). With every new update, every new notification, every new like or comment on our photograph, Facebook post or Whatsapp photo, we get a spike of Dopamine, a hit of that happy hormone. And following that, we then spend an inordinate amount of time seeking a further hit. And another. And another.
For those of us you can, I'd like us to take a look back to a time when we did not have Facebook or other miscellaneous forms of social media. *sharp intake of breath* I know. It's distressing, but just for a few moments, think back. Life still happened, right? You were still entertained, right? You still had friends. Ones you probably saw more regularly or spoke to more frequently than you do now. And there wasn't always this persistent feeling in the middle of your back somewhere that you should be doing something...else.
It's possible that it is just me that experiences all the above. It's possible. But somehow I doubt it.
You will all have heard about Mindfulness. In the last few years, it has become ubiquitous: a saviour of frazzled minds inundated with worry, anxiety and stress. Courses, workshops, retreats, podcasts, articles etc, have laid out different techniques and processes for implementing mindfulness in one's daily life. Indeed, it has even been taken up by employers, eager to improve productivity and wellbeing of their staff.
The premise behind Mindfulness, as I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is to ground a person's thoughts for a space of time. To reign one's mind in to focus solely on the present. Not what appointment you have next; not what you've forgotten to add to your Christmas shopping list; or the witty, barbed response you should have made to a veiled insult you received earlier that day. None of that. Only to focus on your breathing; the comfortable position in which you've situated your body for the session; the sensation of every extremity in relation to its surroundings and the surfaces they are in contact with. To experience your body's sensations and to savour them. For that allocated time, to ignore the pings, the notifications, the unanswered posts and the unliked photos. To just be an unharrassed person, breathing in an out. And in and out.
I must admit, the relatively few times I've tried Mindfulness sessions, I've enjoyed them. But nothing really calls me back to it from one session to the next. The moment my eyes open, I'm once again inundated and my mind is racing back to all the things it held off for that time.
What has all this got to do with reading, you ask?
Well, as the title of the blog post indicates, there is one activity that for me brings the essence of mindfulness to its fullest potential in my life. And that is reading.
I find that a twenty minute read of whatever work of fiction I have on the go- whether a physical book or one on an e-reader- when I come to the end of that time, I proceed about my day with a spring in my step, lighter and happier than I've ever felt after a typical Mindfulness session that the gurus offer.
I think it is because, reading a work of fiction, does not just cause you to forget about the noise and annoyances around you. It does more than that. It whisks you fully away from it and places you in a time and place of your choosing, with companions you are getting to know and becoming friendly with and adventures you are eager to see to fruition. It gives you a life experience totally removed from the one outside of the book. When you do come back, maybe because your pet needs feeding or an alarm has gone off and the real world beckons, yes, it's with a heavy heart because you have to leave the story for that time. But excitement lingers because you know, as soon as you can get another block of time, you'll be back in there, gamboling about fully engaged with the story, your real-life stresses happily forgotten.
If given a choice on the best way to de-stress, I'll choose a good book and a nice long read, anytime.
How about you? Do you agree? Or do would you choose something totally different from a book for a few minutes of abandon in the middle of a busy day?
Please let me know in the comments.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
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