The re-opening
Photo by the amazing Eric Walton
I hope you and your loved ones are well. I received my 2nd vaccination shot this week and the opportunities are slowly trickling in. Spring has arrived, with its promise of new love! I don't know about you but I'm SO ready to turn the page of what was a rough and emotionally draining winter and enjoy precious moments in what I hope will be a lush and blooming summer. But as things slowly progress into a careful (thank goodness!) re-opening, I’m prompted to reflect on not losing the gains we’ve acquired during this pandemic. Because yes, there were gains. Like in anything in life, there are always 2 sides to a coin, a medal, or whatever you wanna call it.
I’m thinking particularly at this notion of “time”, or lack thereof. In a modern society, time is often what’s slipping through our fingers: it is what we’re running out of or don’t have enough of. This last year, as we were forced to pause our busy lives, we were also given an opportunity to reflect within.
As you may know, I used some of this time focusing on the journey within. One of the many purposes leading this introspection was that I wanted to find the reason why I seemed to always perpetuate the same negative cycles. In connecting the dots, I realized I had been my own worst enemy! While searching for ways to counter that pattern, I started examining how we utilize our time and the many ways we can be distracted. Television, social media, alcohol, drugs: these are the obvious distractions, but what about our own thoughts? Come to find out the true and biggest distractions come from within.
Have you ever thought about “awareness” and realized it could serve both our benefit and our detriment? I was astonished at how infrequently I was able to stay in a given moment, without almost immediately having a thought taking my brain by the hand and leading me to a “familiar” topic which would then yield an emotion or a feeling, which I could in turn focus on. Or brood on. Yet, I thought I was “aware” the whole time.
Our brain is so quick at guiding us towards some sort of familiarity it’s most of the time unnoticeable. While we’re busy focusing on what we think is important, our brain is operating in the background and does what it does best: tricking us for comfort sake. After all, its job is to “protect” us and keep us in the “safe” zone.
When was the last time you were truly experiencing the moment for what it is? Not how it made you feel, or what it made you think of or what you wanted to project onto it, but instead just being in the “here and now”, 100% in the present tense. Some people call it “meditation”, I like to call it mindfulness. And that’s when real change can start to take place.
These past few months, I’ve been working on a structured self-inquiry method that uses scientific processes to discover, assimilate, map and rewire constellations of protective brain patterns with leader Bizzie Gold. I cannot recommend the BREAK Method more. The journey was intense and the work is still being done every. single. day. However, I do have some very useful tools in my possession to help me navigate through my protective mechanisms, excuses and emotionally charged narrative that keep me from ultimately making beneficial decisions or connections in my own life.
The journey within is definitely a work in progress. And the mindfulness aspect of it is, in my humble opinion, essential. I really want to keep that going during this re-opening: I wish to truly, genuinely & fundamentally experience musical moments, human interactions and connections with nature! It took a pandemic for some of us to have a wake-up call (this girl right here) and it’s ok. It’s a blank canvas and we’re collectively painting or composing: one brush stroke or one note at a time. So look around and find inspiration in moments of true mindfulness. You can only benefit from it!