It’s hard to stay mindful
March
Originally shared in Letters of Consolation, on March 3, 2024.
I was standing under the dark sky on Friday night, dipping in and out of Arya Starr’s debut album while taking stock of my past two weeks of life, when an airplane floated by and that gentle voice within mentioned that even the night, calm and quiet as it can be, has its disrupters.
Why. I’d been thinking about how uncentered I felt, how my days were bad photocopies of themselves, how stress had carpeted a large landscape of my life, so much so that I couldn’t feel any sense of life at certain times. I couldn’t feel myself in myself.
We all crave calm. At least, most of us do. We long for a reality in which we don’t feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, despite our experience of suffering. We wish to stand on a roaring sea and bear witness only to its gentleness. To feel lightweight as we plant our steps on life’s stiff grounds.
Mindfulness makes these possible. Presence reaches the deep parts of our being to turn chaos into calm. But it isn’t the easiest state of self to embody when there’s a forest of affairs in your mind.
What that voice brought was a reminder of this. A reminder that we’ll experience periods, some longer than others, when life feels tumultuous and we’re unable to give our attention to what matters most. And that’s just the nature of things.
It also brought to mind that choosing mindfulness is choosing a lifelong practice fated for imperfection. But we can take solace in knowing that (1) it’s a healing practice and (2) each time we catch ourselves off-course, each time our capacity for presence wears thin and we think ‘I’m no good at this’, we’re experiencing a blessing because such moments force us to take stock of how we’re living, revealing our distractions and returning us to the altar of mindfulness and state of calm.
No state of self is everlasting. But the more we say yes to one, the larger space it occupies in our reality. The more we look past our shortcomings and keep teaching ourselves to stay mindful, the more we live a life of presence and find fullness in this world.
Tea for relaxation
Music: Mad About You, Hooverphonic.
Curious: 50 hours in the most nuked place on earth erased from maps.
In conversation: Martin Scorsese and the cast of Killers of The Flower Moon — an absolutely moving film.
Small dive: Love this behind-the-scene story of Ryan Trahan’s recent commercial.
For more ideas like this, sign up for Letters of Consolation; letters for finding calm and meaning, delivered every two weeks, on Sundays.
@etashelinto