Amid the Noise
I’ve come outside to write while Paige finishes her hour of meditation before dinner. We’ve been giving our attention a bit more attention recently, and ye olde sayings have never rang so true: we become like the things we give our attention to. What you focus on expands. And the quality of our thoughts determine the quality of our lives.
The walk, social media, traffic, and people require most of our attention on the walk. You simply cannot find true inner stillness within constant activity. The sages of old might have imagined otherwise, but as a matter of neuroscience, psychology, and consistent mindfulness, we can see that our environment is always at work forming what we become.
In other words, if you are surrounded by chaos, you will have to work that much harder to ward off inner chaos. If you are constantly bombarded with language, your mind is more prone to getting carried away by an erratic inner monologue. If you are constantly redirecting your attention between phone and environment, you will eventually not be able to give continued attention as easily, desiring to shift it more frequently.
However, if you meditate, training your attention on a variety of not-so-stimulating things for extended periods of focus, you won’t only focus better; you will hear, smell, taste, and see what is here and now better.
For example, as we continue upping our intake of sugar, salt, fat, or keep doing more and more adrenaline excreting activities, or have more and more sex, or watch more and more tv… we will gradually diminish the neural reward our mind originally gave us, craving more to satisfy a vacancy that cannot be satisfied through continuous pursuit. We must eventually deprive ourselves if we want the kind of experience we used to get from it.
WITH MEDITATION and more broadly, mindfulness, we can disrupt this addiction and deprivation cycle altogether. There is texture and sweetness and savoriness all in broccoli, if you take time to notice it. Keep looking for it. What you focus on expands.
TV and Videogames haven’t simply gotten worse. There are better effects, more rigorous acting and efforts, grander narratives and greater tech capacities than ever. But we overconsume, and we grow desensitized. See it from the eyes of your childhood self.
Even your everyday noise can be better interpreted with regular attentiveness. What was once a smear of sound (sirens and talking and music and bugs and birds) can be better tuned into if you have trained that focus.
Attention, or what we would probably prefer to call awareness, is EVERYTHING.
How much harder it is to be aware of the beauty in the world when we most frequently train our awareness on desire, comparison, and judgment.
Meditation isn’t the act of silencing thoughts. It is the practice of choosing what to be aware of.
