The inside of my head is a very loud and chaotic place most
of the time.
At any given moment, there are pitched battles being fought,
maps being drawn up, people running around naked, someone screaming, “Wait, you
forgot something!!”, 3 lines of a random song playing on a loop (right now it’s
“Woman in Love” by Barbara Streisand, for some reason), a funny but kind of mean critic (kind of like the dudes in The Muppet Show, but darker)
sniping at everyone around, including me, and one very bad little monkey
chattering and leaping about.
It’s not normally a pleasant place to hang out. Even I don’t
like being there most of the time, but it’s so distractingly busy that I barely
have time to look out the windows and see what’s happening in the rest of the
world most days.
In fact, I spend SO much of my time there that it’s a long,
long, longstanding joke amongst my friends that I can be abused in various ways
without noticing. In junior high, my now-business partner once managed to get
all but one of the buttons on a blouse I was wearing unbuttoned before I
noticed what he was doing. And no, we weren’t dating. And yes, he remembers
that incident more fondly than I do.
There are actually good things about being so “up in my head”:
I have an incredibly high pain tolerance, because I don’t notice sensation in
my body a lot of the time. But there are some really bad things about it too.
Like the fact that I’m often living in the past and the
future, and letting the present get by me. That, in case you’re not subject to such
dwellings, is a recipe for depression and anxiety. Plus, it takes me away from
enjoying whatever might be going on out there in the real world.
So as part of my #100DaysofHealth, I committed to meditating
20 minutes every day. And I’ll be the first to admit, it hasn’t been EVERY day,
but it’s been most days.
Meditation, at its core, is about NOTICING your thoughts
without following or becoming attached to them, and it has an interesting side
effect once you get somewhat consistent about it: you find yourself noticing
more and more things, even when you’re not meditating.
And a lot of those things are small, but surprising and
joy-producing. This has been happening to me for a handful of days now, and
some of them will sound silly, but they’ve all made my gratitude list because they’re
not things I’d normally notice Like:
I noticed the other day how great the air conditioning in my
car feels against my skin when I’ve just be out in the 90 degree weather.
I noticed that I have a machine in my kitchen that
automatically, and without me doing anything on a day to day basis, keeps my
food from spoiling and dispenses—are you ready for this? ICE. IN THE SUMMER. My
great great grandmother would have killed for a miracle like that.
I’ve begun to notice when I’m full, and stop eating. It’s
way earlier in most meals than I thought.
I noticed today how awesome my feet are. Oh, they’re huge
and hideous and usually dirty from being shoeless all the time, but they’ve
carried me through, what? millions of miles of walking? And they almost never
break.
I notice birds chirping outside all the time. And children’s
intense, funny conversations (“No, Canada’s really big! It’s bigger than New
York!”) and how when I walk in the park the smells change every couple of
steps.
And I spent most of my yoga class tonight noticing that,
every once in a while, a little breeze would blow through the crack under the
door next to me and it felt so, so good.
Outside my head, it turns out, is a place full of
experiences I’d like to keep having…if I can just keep noticing them. Taking a
few minutes a day to watch the wars and the plans and the conversations and the
pictures, but NOT participate in them, has allowed me to spend more and more
time out where the real and interesting stuff is happening.
If you’re looking for a little break from the dissonant
circus inside your head, give meditation a try. There’s an excellent app called 10% Happier: Meditation
for Fidgety Skeptics that will both remind you to do it and walk you through
lessons from experts. It’s not easy and it’s not instant, but in just a couple
of weeks, I can see a significant in my day to day moments of happiness. Maybe
you will, too.
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