Input focuses our brain. When we are driving and we get sleepy we turn
up the music and switch over to rock. When
we can’t sleep we turn on something quiet.
When we are bored we watch TV. When
I am at work and bored I listen to audio books.
We take our iPods and our phones with us everywhere. We have playlists for jogging and walking the
dog and walking to the bus. I keep a
list in my hand at the grocery store and I’m surrounded by advertising, over
head music plays to put me in a mood for spending. We flip through magazines we read books
outside on nice days.
How often do we say no to the input and just let our brain
think in its own direction without any focus to our attention? I’m
not talking about meditation. Meditation
is usually an intentional mode of consciousness to realize some benefit, aka
focused. I’m talking about just sitting
in a quiet place and letting your mind wander.
Silence the input.
I have been trying to do this for 30 min a day for the last
week. So far I have missed 2 days and
had vastly different experiences each time.
My first reaction each day is to reach first for something to read, then
I want to turn on the radio, at that point I will typically start talking to my
dog. I want to get up and do a chore,
throw clothes in the washer, do a load of dishes, distract myself. It feels like wasted time, I hate wasted time
but I’ll get back to that later. It takes about 5 min to settle myself into the
idea, and then I start thinking.
Really thinking, actually thinking about my world, my job,
my life, my needs, my wants, my fears, my behavior, how I affect others, how I
react to others. I’m not responding to
input, I’m thinking. Some days this has been pleasant and restful. Other days this has ushered in great
emotional turbulence I had been avoiding.
Each and every time it has been valuable. Things feel real and visceral in a way that
they don’t the rest of the day. It’s like
walking out of a movie theater to meet the real world on a hot summer afternoon.
The world is full of noise and I have turned it off.
I love the noise. The noise lets me pretend my life is full.
The noise makes it all feel important. I
don’t want to let go of the noise yet.
The noise is easy and my life is hard.
The noise is simple and my emotions are big and complicated. I would rather just watch “How I Met Your
Mother” and surf Facebook than spend time thinking about what I’ve let go of in
my life and how hard it will be to get back. I’m not ready to cancel cable and quit
Facebook, but for 30 minutes a day I am trying to take in the silence. I am reminding my brain of its original job
and slowly working my way back into an intentional life. The noise is bad for me.
I hate wasting time but it seems that is all I am ever
doing. When I am letting the input run
my thoughts for me the input decides if I am entertained. If the input is deciding for me how to think, how
active am I being? How can I consider
any moment lived in when I’m barely awake for it? I want the world to feel real
for me again.
These
moments are dying in my hands and I’m doing what? …..on Facebook?
