04-23-2004, 05:42 AM
I have some family members who are completely and utterly fascinated with the minutiae of daily life. They appear to be completely absorbed by whatever happens to be involved with getting through the day.
I tend to look down on this perspective, because I feel that they're missing the big picture. Does it really matter whether it's one minute faster to take exit 310 on the way home instead of 311? It's one thing to be curious and to figure it out, but what I'm talking about is the ability to focus in on stuff like that as if it were the Most Important Issue of Our Day.
I like to keep things in perspective. I know that we all get caught up in our own lives, but I realize that the little stuff is just little stuff, and I try to remember that there's more to life than whether I'm unhappy with the quality of swimming instruction at the city pool.
To write blogs, I think most people would need to have perspective #1- that the small stuff matters, and matters a great deal. While it would be nice to get to the underlying implications of the situations that are described in blogs (I *hate* that name, btw, I just don't like the sound of it), that is a lot more time consuming and most people won't be able to pull that degree of depth off on a regular basis.
But, I think there's value in perspective #1, as hard as it is for me to accept it. I worked briefly with a woman who made an effort to apply the principles of mindfulness to her work, and it was a great experience. Most people tend to feel that the details of something like serving lunch to four-year-olds is beneath them. They muddle through and get the job done, but they do an adequate and not an excellent job, and it's clear their mind is somewhere else and that they're not interested in improving even when mistakes are made. They can see the big picture, but it's interfering with their competence and also their enjoyment of the current task.
But, my coworker managed to turn the task into something of an art form. Focusing on the details of the task helped her to maintain awareness of what she was doing, and she didn't get that "glazed over" look that others get in similar situations. I'm so absent minded most of the time that this was an eye-opener for me.
Most of our lives will be spent taking care of the little, unimportant tasks that come up, not discovering the nature of the meaning of life. If the little stuff is beneath us, we're going to be spending a lot of time bored and uninvolved. That sets the stage for depression and other nasty conditions. Even if it doesn't *really* matter, shouldn't we allow the small stuff to matter at least to us while we're living it?
There's a lot of corny 70's cliches that I'm trying to avoid here. I'm trying to go deeper than "be here now." But, by going deeper, am I once again missing the point?
-Griselda
I tend to look down on this perspective, because I feel that they're missing the big picture. Does it really matter whether it's one minute faster to take exit 310 on the way home instead of 311? It's one thing to be curious and to figure it out, but what I'm talking about is the ability to focus in on stuff like that as if it were the Most Important Issue of Our Day.
I like to keep things in perspective. I know that we all get caught up in our own lives, but I realize that the little stuff is just little stuff, and I try to remember that there's more to life than whether I'm unhappy with the quality of swimming instruction at the city pool.
To write blogs, I think most people would need to have perspective #1- that the small stuff matters, and matters a great deal. While it would be nice to get to the underlying implications of the situations that are described in blogs (I *hate* that name, btw, I just don't like the sound of it), that is a lot more time consuming and most people won't be able to pull that degree of depth off on a regular basis.
But, I think there's value in perspective #1, as hard as it is for me to accept it. I worked briefly with a woman who made an effort to apply the principles of mindfulness to her work, and it was a great experience. Most people tend to feel that the details of something like serving lunch to four-year-olds is beneath them. They muddle through and get the job done, but they do an adequate and not an excellent job, and it's clear their mind is somewhere else and that they're not interested in improving even when mistakes are made. They can see the big picture, but it's interfering with their competence and also their enjoyment of the current task.
But, my coworker managed to turn the task into something of an art form. Focusing on the details of the task helped her to maintain awareness of what she was doing, and she didn't get that "glazed over" look that others get in similar situations. I'm so absent minded most of the time that this was an eye-opener for me.
Most of our lives will be spent taking care of the little, unimportant tasks that come up, not discovering the nature of the meaning of life. If the little stuff is beneath us, we're going to be spending a lot of time bored and uninvolved. That sets the stage for depression and other nasty conditions. Even if it doesn't *really* matter, shouldn't we allow the small stuff to matter at least to us while we're living it?
There's a lot of corny 70's cliches that I'm trying to avoid here. I'm trying to go deeper than "be here now." But, by going deeper, am I once again missing the point?
-Griselda
Why can't we all just get along
--Pete
--Pete