Chasing The Joy of Un-Habits
We are creatures of habit.
We rise at the same time, stumble into the bathroom, use the toilet, brush our teeth and pad down the hall to the kitchen for our first cup of coffee.
Without thinking, we run through the first hour or so of our morning—as we do many many times throughout our day—on autopilot. And this has become our undoing. Because when we are responding to the world in habitual form, we are not present; in essence, we are not alive.
Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am.” Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us Descartes was wrong, chiding, “When I think, I am not here.”
How much of our day do we spend thinking about things other than that which we are doing?
We ruminate on our past----replaying events ranging from things we perceived as slights that occurred earlier in the day, to wounds that occurred decades prior. Were these in reflection of how we may have contributed to the discord or how we might approach things differently in the future, we could use this time of contemplation to grow.
How often do we instead allow ourselves to cycle downward into a deeper cycle of anger or regret?
This is habit.
And one we must work hard to break.
Un-habits, if you will.
Because our mindlessness does greater harm than we realize. We not only stunt our soul’s growth by recycling pain with no intent to learn from it; we steal the joy of being present in our own lives.
Instead of being with those we love, we are miles away, our body a placeholder next to them, our thoughts circling old hurts, or worries that may never be.
But how?
It is raining. I watch the water hit the pavement in a steady staccato. I love the rain. It isn’t just the sense that all is cleansed by it, it is the sense of being cloaked in it, protected by it, enveloped in a grey beauty that makes me feel safe.
The steady rhythm, drumming on the roof, hits “pause” on life.
It feels okay just to sit, unmoving, and watch rivulets form on the windows, running in their own private patterns to form small streams that flow onto the sill, spilling down onto the roof beneath my upstairs window.
I love to breathe in the smell of rain. The scents it releases from pounding the dirt, the flowers, the shrubs, the trees. I read somewhere that it changes the ion particles in the air and this is the “clean” smell that greets us after a passing storm.
I feel cloaked in a sort of cloud, a welcoming, soft, reassuring love that offers a new start.
A new feeling arises.
For a moment, I can see myself doing more. More than that, I feel myself being more. More than I’ve ever been or done before. The feeling is one of expansive possibilities.
Is this what is meant by the “unbearable lightness of being”?
Without trying, I realize I have stumbled upon mindfulness.
And while some habits are good (neuroscientists tell us we couldn’t function if we had to make decisions about everything we do on a daily basis) it is the custom of allowing our thoughts to be anywhere (usually on something negative) but focused on what we’re doing, that creates much of the stress in our lives.
Mindfulness counteracts this.
So I am working toward becoming more mindful. My thoughts still wander often from what I am doing—even while reading or engaged in conversation with someone else.
But I’m now aware of it more quickly, which allows me to bring myself back to the present. It is a work in progress.
And while I hope to become less stressed, I am really chasing that sense of joy and possibility I glimpsed while immersed in the beauty of a rainstorm.
I am sure it is why the call to mindfulness is ever-present.
Once you experience it, you want to feel it again.
Please drop me a line when you do. I’d love to know what you felt and what you are doing to find your way there again.
Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash
Photo by reza shayestehpour on Unsplash
