Lately I’ve been happy.
Because I’ve been living mindfully. I started this blog a little over a
year ago with a post about living in the moment.
Living in the moment. Living
mindfully.
Same thing.
Most of my life I did not live in the moment. When I lived in Africa, the lifestyle of Cameroonians opened my eyes to the power of being present and engaged with what was right in front of me. Instead of in my head analyzing the
past, rehearsing conversations that I intended to have, and fantasizing about
the future—how great everything will be when I’m skinny, when I have this job,
that boyfriend, this swimsuit, that car.
At the time, I didn’t understand that what I felt in
Cameroon was a result of mindful living. I didn’t get it until years and years
later when I read Slowing Down to the
Speed of Life by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey. That was the 1997
edition; now I’m reading the 2009 revised and updated edition. I read it
slowly; a little bit every day like a Bible.
It tells me there are two modes of thinking: analytical and
free flowing.
Analytical thinking has its place. We use it do things like
use a computer, drive a car, follow maps, learn language, and balance
checkbooks. In its proper usage, analytical thinking works from your memory.
Because of it, you don’t have to relearn how to get to the grocery store each
time.
Free flowing thinking happens when you are in the moment.
You’re not thinking about the tone your boss used to talk to you, not trying to figure out
how to help your son be organized at school, not berating yourself for eating a
whole sleeve of cookies, not imagining how much better your writing will be
when you have a new iPad.
Instead you see how sun on your daughter’s skin shows the
teeniest slivers of every color of the rainbow, how sadness feels like a swell
in your chest and sometimes hurts more when you try to smile it away, how you
like the look of your gnarled, rooty fingers because they look like your dad’s.
Analytical thinking is math; free flowing thinking is
poetry. Both wonderful—when kept in their places. Unfortunately analytical
thinking dominates our time and seeps into so many moments where it wrecks
havoc. You cannot see the beauty in front of you if you are in your head trying
to solve some problem of the past or to live some unreal life of the future.
The key to staying in the free flowing thinking mode is just
to recognize when you’re not in it. Just taking note changes the way you think.
It takes practice but gets easier the more you do it. When I catch myself lost
in the maze of my analytical thinking I might say—Ah there I go again, trying
to find hidden meaning in my co-worker’s words. Then I look around and focus on
something in front of me. My kids get a lot of what must seem like random hugs
from me lately.
It’s not always easy. Especially if over-analyzing was a way
of life for many, many years. You can easily stumble back into that pattern and
not notice your overwrought thinking for days or weeks. Or sometimes you’re right there in the
peace of the moment and those analytical thoughts are barking right in your
ear. That’s when I recite Shifu’s line from Kung Fu Panda, “I…inn...inner
peace, inn…inner peace” in a quavering voice.
Travel is where I am a Viking of mindful living. My free-flow thinking conquers and reigns over my analytical rants. It comes so naturally. Because we tell
ourselves that we are free to let go when we travel. We’re supposed to be
taking a break. There is new stuff to look at and we are there to look at it.
We paid good money to look at it.
Now if you really practice mindful living, you know that
there is good stuff to look at right in your own home, backyard, office, grocery
store, car. Everywhere. Because it’s not the stuff that’s beautiful. It’s your
perspective. But even Shifu gets distracted by flapping sounds. A boost, like
travel, helps us deeply practice mindful living.
And on that note, I propose that it doesn’t really matter
where you travel. Any destination is made special when experienced by a mindful
liver. [HA!!! Can you believe I just wrote that sentence? I have to leave it
in. Hilarious.] Er…mindfulness makes any place special.
My kids and I went on a ski trip to the Wisconsin Dells. If
you read my last post, you know that I endured quite a bit of planning anxiety.
In the end, the decision to go to the Dells may have just been because I was
suffocating in the rabbit hole.
Now you will not find the Dells in Conde Nast Traveler or Travel & Leisure or even my favorite travel magazine, Afar (though maybe because they are cool that way). The sophisticated, saavy traveler might describe the Dells as tacky, maybe wacky, maybe sugar-coated nonsense.
But as a pre-teen in the 70s I went to the Dells often with my
family and my best friend’s family. We stayed at Monaco Motel. Next door to Flamingo Motel. Across
the street from Shamrock and Mr. Pancake. Maybe our parents saw it as a goofy place to go to please the kids, but we knew only that it was THE place to be.
Last summer we stayed at Monaco Motel. Nothing had changed
since the 70s. Nothing. I mean even the music being piped out to the picnic area
and pool in the parking lot was 70s music! I heard Barracuda by Heart, Bad
Girls by Donna Summer, Ku Fu Fighting by KC and the Sunshine Band, Oye Como Va
by Santana, Radar Love by Golden Earrings, and on and on. The small, dark
arcade was the same. The light fixtures
the same. The pool the same.
Of course that is why I like the Dells—the nostalgia and the
kitsch. The hotel I picked for our ski trip would not have the nostalgia, but
plenty o’ kitsch. Mt. Olympus is one of those mega complexes without a soul,
not even an inkling of personality. Stickers and plastic slapped together and
propped up. Enjoyed most by kids who aren't jaded, drunk adults who are,
or mindful livers (heee) who see beauty in everything. Or all three!
Side note: Monaco Motel was recently bought by Mt. Olympus.
Moments are full of meaning and interest when you live
mindfully. I people-watched at the indoor water park. In my analytical mindset
I would have seen the people as tacky, low class, shallow, sloppy. But in my
free flow mindset, I witnessed a Rubenesque woman floating down the “Lazy River”
holding her cherubic baby who raised his sweet little hand to her face and
looked at her like she was a goddess. She was. They floated by in an
otherworldly love bubble.
The man with MADE IN THE USA tattooed across his entire
muscular back in block letters was wrought with meaning and metaphor for me. He
was the symbol of a country built on the backs of its hardworking countrymen
and women. I saw 1950s patriotic propaganda.
A snack bar cashier swiped the plastic wristbands that
stayed on our wrists the whole three days we were there and gave us
nothing-tasting soft serve ice creams cones as the snow fell in big white
flakes outside the steamy pool windows. She had an accent and I knew she must
be working on a temporary visa from some European country. All brimming with
future and potential, she did not exude that “stuck here” attitude. She was
living life, exploring America, working in a water park for awhile then using
her money to go on to explore maybe Spain or South Africa or Montana.
You see things in a positive light when you live mindfully. You don't take things so seriously. You’re not
attaching a lot of predisposed ideas on your experiences. Instead of seeing the
shoddy wallpaper work, you see a Greek fantasy bed.
You try things with an open mind. Instead of thinking that
food at a place that has delivery cars with moose butts on them must be
terrible, you are intrigued by the restaurant called Moosejaw. And you eat there.
And the kids think the chocolate milk is dreamy. You enjoy a 7-and-7 because it
seems like the perfect thing to drink in the Dells. And it is. Sweet and silly.
You’re more apt to wander. Instead of saying, What the fuck is that? when you see
three big boob-like mounds, you say Hmmm,
oooo, let’s check it out … and you instantly pull into the parking lot of
the Dynasty Chinese Restaurant. And you eat there. And you plan on not going
back.
Nostalgia sits quietly behind the newer mega-land-ness of
the Dells. But it is still there—it can be seen when you look from a mindful
perspective. And the bonus is that, through this lens, the big, flashy
attractions that took center stage over the Duck Boat rides of the 70s also
seem worth a look. Why not? So pull off the road, slow down, and take a look.
moment after sweet, silly moment.
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