How to Exist: Overcoming the Human Allergy to the Present Moment
I propose a simple experiment: sit for three minutes doing absolutely nothing while remaining content. Most of us struggle because we are allergic to the present, constantly seeking distractions to escape the discomfort of just being. By practicing existence for a few seconds at a time using our breath, we can learn to tolerate the moment without fleeing into thoughts or actions.
It is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear.
- oleggromov
I recently found out that I'm the most miserable when I'm rushing.
If something happens, and I allow it to break the flow of things, I become stressed and worried and time flies. When I allowed myself to simply exist for a week, without a crazy planned-in-advance vacation, the week felt like a month. No joking.
Where this urge to always rush comes from is a good question. I imagine it's very much cultural, we're expected to rush and be busy.
- augment_me
In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living.
Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.
- jmfldn
As the Buddhist joke goes 'don't just do something, stand there'.
- xenocratus
> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear.
Alternative interpretation: my existence is not about sitting there, getting mouldy on the sofa. It never crosses my mind that I should feel unrest because I can't / don't want to just sit there and do nothing, nor does it feel like a revelation to think about it. Maybe it also says something about you if this is something you worry about on some deep level.
- BohdanPetryshyn
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
- bdauvergne
Is the writer american, because it seems to me, a french man, a specially american take on life. Being contemplating and content seems a lot easier for us.
- jqbd
Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?
- zkmon
I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around.
What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.