‘Did your mind wander off just then?’ asks my online yoga teacher.
‘Bring it back. Focus on what feels good.’
Did she read my mind?
Mindfulness is so helpful when we are faced with uncertain times whether at work, in relationships, or in families. It’s often said that we are what our thoughts make us. It’s like the story of the Snow Queen, where the little boy Kay has a splinter of a distorting mirror and he can’t rid of it until his friend Gerda finds him: the world is as we see it. But what if we can’t shut down what our mind is telling us? What if our story takes over? ‘Oh, that’s just their story,’ we say of people we don’t respect very much, ‘They always say the same thing over and over again.’
The thing is that when we feel stuck in life, we often find ourselves repeating the same story over and over again to ourselves and others. ‘It’s all right for some,’ we say. Or, ‘If only.’ When we’re in this situation, we rarely find the chance to say to ourselves, ‘What if?’ What if we can be visible to ourselves and others? We’re born with the desire to be visible. The earliest forms of narrative we call ‘children’s stories’ are in fact mental landscapes filled with imaginative possibilities. Every parent knows how important sharing stories can be for the growing the potential of a child.
But what about our potential? Have we lost sight of what the power of story can do for us? At a recent online gathering of educators, the presenter asked us to share our story. People leapt at the chance. Apart from anything else, we have all felt so distanced lately! For some, getting to talk to friends via Zoom, was relaxing. But there were others who were frustrated by being glued to their smart phones. They were fed up with the ‘stream of negativity’ from the digital realm and ‘death by email’.
Speaking to someone is actually an event! And it’s such an event, we miss if we don’t do it enough. In ancient Hebrew, the word for ‘spoken word’, ‘dabar’, also meant ‘an event’.
When was the last time you worded it out with someone? Speaking takes time and that implies inconvenience these days. Since lockdown, I’ve noticed how much people crave that face-to-face connection.
Meanwhile, I’ve got an exciting new website and more exciting news coming soon! Watch this space..
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X Elizabeth Rose
