I am always grateful when I spot a pattern in myself: some behaviour or thought that I have been inadvertently repeating so often that I’ve stopped noticing that I do it at all. It always feels like a victory. I can drag it out into the sunlight and walk around it. Why do I DO that? And is doing it helping me, really? I’ve noticed I often tend to make blogs exploring these aspects of myself, perhaps as a way of making them even more visible, pinning them down so they can’t scuttle back into the dark and start pulling at my strings in secret again.
When I am sad or lost or confused or frustrated, I look for answers. “What will fix this?” I’ll leap on a book with a promising title, hungry and attentive. I’ll read it, nodding, “yes, yes, that’s it.” I’ll explore its ideas with religious zeal for a day or two, a week at most, and then I’ll get swept up in something or other, too distracted to keep practising its message, until the next time I feel that pull of “not right, not right” and then off I’ll go again, looking for another, different answer, another light to follow.
It serves a purpose, in its way. It gives me the burst of momentum I often need to get out of a hole and moving again, but it’s a superficial way of behaving that runs the risk of nothing ever really sticking, nothing ever really changing.
I got cross with myself for doing it again this week. Not in a harsh way; there is a more friendly kind of crossness that can come from a no-nonsense friend who loves you completely and is not going to indulge in a repeat of your bullshit right now – I got cross like that, with a laugh and a glare. Come on, Jo. Stop it. How many books full of life-changing ideas have you read and passed over, impatient for a quicker fix, less commitment? And what deeper, slower, truly transformative practice are you missing by shopping around like this? Chögyam Trungpa calls it ‘Spiritual Materialism’. It’s self-help junk food. Cure scrolling. I do it.
Yes, let’s tear it all down, like an overgrown garden. Let’s get back to the ground so we can see more clearly and remember what matters, remember what’s already here. What I found growing underneath all the noise has made me laugh and take a deep breath. Because yes of course. Of course that’s what I’d find.
This is what matters more than anything, the boring, basic truth, the foundational bedrock of any kind of healing or peace or happiness: it is to be here, now, in this moment. It is the thing I’ve said and written about a hundred, a thousand times before, in an attempt to instil it in my own mind as much as yours. It is the message passed down the ages, by spiritual teachers and poets to neuroscientists. It is perhaps the only message that has real roots and the one most widely ignored. To not live in some guessed-at future, to definitely not live in the past, to not live in some speculative realm of imagination about what might be happening that you have very little evidence for but are desperately going to ruminate on anyway, but to drag yourself back to the aching, beautiful, interesting, surprising present, again, again. The easiest thing. The fuckawful hardest thing. That’s it. That’s what – all – I really need to do, all I’ve ever needed to do; the only brand of ‘self-help’ I really need. What’s actually happening? What’s here around me? Can I be with it? Can I find a way to respond with some kind of care, curiosity and courage? Can I trust that a different book or endless thinking won’t ‘fix’ any emotion or worry I’m feeling but being still and present and wide-open to my experience right now might? Breath by breath, sensation by sensation, letting everything rise and fall again.
I think it’s interesting how we think this isn’t good enough; interesting how we all switch off at this point and go back to what we usually do instead, looking elsewhere. Why are we so cynical? Why do we avoid it so much? Because we think the past or the future holds some answer we’re missing, or that someone else does, and it might just be another page-turn or another furious thought away. I think it’s about as simple as that, and that maybe it’s about capitalism too, but it’s also because trust in the present is hard. Reading and thinking about problems is compelling (and certainly easier than changing anything) and that new guru sounds like they could fix you, too, and that new thing you could buy has such good reviews. We’re sure they hold some gem, some clue, and yet all they often do is spin us away from the moment we actually have, this moment that can act like an open doorway through which everything else we’re looking for starts to flow right in. It is so hard to trust in that. So hard to just put everything else down and just be here in our body, in this minute, in this day, and to see what happens.
But, if I know anything, I know that this is the thing I want to keep getting better at. I don’t want to end my life thinking “I got really good at reading and ignoring self-help books.” I want to be able to say, “Year on year, I got really good at being fully here, in each moment that came.” I think now as I type it that it might be the only real achievement that matters to me.
Anyway, the basil seedlings growing on my desk have six leaves each and I can rub their soft stems and make my fingers smell of their woody fresh tang scent.
Anyway, there is a row of nervous-looking baby starlings all in a line, hopping along the TV aerial after their mother.
Anyway, I have gone back to reading novels.
If you want to get better at all this too and haven’t given it an honest, disciplined chance yet, I still think ‘Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World’ by Mark Williams and Danny Penman is about the best and simplest resource available. (Just try to resist the urge of being a self-help shopper and do actually follow the programme!)
📚 I’ve been reading…
The Painted Man by Peter Brett – great world concept but ohmyword problematic representation of women. Hard pass. Now reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara in my usual style of reading popular books way way after everyone else.
❤️ I’ve been enjoying…
Litter picking! I’ve got myself a grabber, I’ve got a way to tie a bin bag onto my mobility scooter, and now my wanders around the neighbourhood will never be the same again. I could have written all about that this week but I thought I’d save it for a Guardian article I’ve got coming up. In any case, all of you who follow me on Instagram and Twitter will no doubt have heard all about it.
💭 I’ve been looking forward to…
Playing Tears of the Kingdom but I am not allowed to buy it before I’ve submitted some new additions to my book. I don’t think I’ve ever been more motivated to finish anything in my life.
🌱 I’ve been growing…
EVERYTHING. Pea shoots, beansprouts, cress, cucamelons, Cape gooseberries, MORE tomatoes, mint, dill… Help, I can’t stop.
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I feel so seen ! :-) thank you as always for your beautiful words & feelings
I always seem to look everywhere but forget that all I need is to be here, present in the moment xx
It is so good to be reminded about the here and now and living with mindfulness. Thank you, Josie.
In the midst of medical stuff I need this more than ever. Take care, Jenni xx