"Often I take some time at the end of the day to go for a walk along the quiet street where I live. Lovely oak trees line the road, and between them you can see the sky, sometimes clear and deep blue, sometimes dark and overclouded. I walk back and forth, using the movement of my body and the feeling of my feet touching the ground to bring my mind to balance and to let go of the worries that have a way of niggling into oneself.
One evening I found myself thinking about one of my sisters. I had sent her a birthday present and she had not called to say thank you, which hurt me. I began to think, "How come she never calls back...She never reaches out to me, " and so on. Right then I recognised I was creating a whole story out of one fact: She had not called. The story involved not only these thoughts but a whole series of feelings that were very familiar- feelings of being ignored or invisible.
This moment of clarity allowed me to make a choice. Did I want to spend my time on this beautiful evening with these thoughts? No, I would much rather enjoy being present with the trees, the quiet, and my body moving. I saw I could choose to reinforce these feelings by believing them and building up a sense of myself as unrecognised, or I could drop the thoughts. It was such a clear choice and a profound gift to be able to see how I was creating suffering and separation for myself, then to let this pattern go and continue walking.
Each of us is presented with the same kind of choice many times in our daily lives. ...Mindfulness gives us the opportunity to reject negative habitual mind patterns and opt for serving our happiness. ..To bring awareness and love to the things we do, ..to get off automatic pilot and be present for out lives instead of just being carried along by the momentum of habit and doing.
Photo by Jane Giacone