_estar
16/04/22 from the siesta-dimension, Spain
Eclectic content warning today. This week, everything has gone around rain, the present, no-code tools, and a native troll doing its best.
(Music-matching!)
Suppose I tell you to sit for 30 minutes without doing anything, no phone, no music, no movement, no active thinking. Just yourself. Staying. Being.
Would you think it is easy? What if 10 minutes instead of 30? Wanna try? You can try it now if you feel like it. Go ahead. Set a 10 minutes timer, turn off the notifications, and just sit. You can close your eyes too, or keep them open. See ya in 10 minutes.
A few years ago —probably more than 7, I read a blog post that changed my understanding of meditation (and I've never found it back). We all have that idyllic and cinematic picture that meditation is sitting under a waterfall for the whole day while fasting for a month straight. In the same way, eating is not going to a 3 Michelin stars restaurant all the time; meditation is not climbing to the top of a mountain to repeat a mantra in a temple.
In its most basic form, meditation is putting your thoughts at rest. Is pausing for a while, leaving everything for a sec, and just being present. Staying as a tree. Being present in that very moment. You probably (almost) meditate without knowing a few times a day. Washing the dishes in auto-pilot, paying attention to the water through your hands and the soap bubbles is meditating. Watering the plants, staring at the wet soil, and breathing the geosmin smell is meditating.
There is a second part, though —and the most challenging one. It is worth nothing if you spend that time thinking about what's coming next, the tasks you have left to complete, or regretting that choice you made. Entering one of those thoughts spiral is inevitable, but your attitude to them is what makes the difference. The moment you notice yourself trapped in one of these loops, just force yourself to stop and come back to the present. Here is where a home base becomes handy. A home base is anything happening now that you can focus your attention on. The tool to gently stopping those thoughts-streams and returning to the present. It could be the sensation of the air in your nose when breathing, the soap bubbles in the dishes moving, the noise of the water falling into the pots... it can be anything. —I tend to choose the breathing sensation as it repeats frequently and creates a constant cue in me.
If you give it a try —I know you will; you will find yourself distracted all the time. The key is; gently return to your home base as soon as you detect you've deviated from it, without judging or pushing yourself. And that's pretty much it. That's meditation.
In the first letter, I talked about habits. Meditating is probably the only self-acquired habit I've included in my daily routine in the latest years. And it does not stop the moment you open your eyes to resume your tasks. It soon becomes a cue in your daily life. I find myself sometimes saying in my head, 'Here and now' when I realize I'm lost in my thoughts and not paying attention to the moment I am now. If you accompany that by putting a soft smile on your lips, it becomes instant awareness.
It is like going to the gym but for the mind —I think way less painful and more accessible, though. Nonetheless, it is not the easy path either. I want to quote Naval Ravikant again —this is the second time he appears in the letter. Some people hate him, and some people praise him. I respect him. He always finds a workaround to not speak deeply about himself and his personal life; he has his very own weird ideas. Still, he undeniably says many truths. Truths like fists (and probably, only if you're a Spanish-speaker reader have understood that, but some concepts cannot be expressed any other way).
“Following the short-term pain will lead you to long-term gains”. Said another way —the way I read it. Big rewards never come after following the easy path.
I've tried to replicate today the words of that blog post I mentioned. I hope it makes you think. I leave you here a quote from the 17th Century to close the topic.
"All of humanity's problems stem from
man'shuman's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."Blaise Pascal
Totally unrelated, apart from the rain starring the Spring in the southern side of Spain —En Abril, aguas mil they say. I've been dealing with no-code tools this week and I want to give a massive shoutout to Kathy Li. Thanks to this post that helped me configure a new email address —from now on, you can contact me using tu@josealbertolab.com too. She also does a great job documenting her personal projects in the same blog. Great discovery!
Also, I want to briefly touch on the soap opera of the week. You probably have heard already that Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter to —apparently, continue his fight for free speech. That has opened a massive fight in the social network. I want to share the most interesting thread analysis I've read around the topic these days. It is by Yishan Wong, Reddit’s ex-CEO, link here.
That's all. I hope you like this siesta edition.
Enjoy the sunny weekend and Easter holidays!