As I’ve been trying to change things lately and develop better habits, it’s dawned on me just how much of human life and experience is internal experience. I mean, it’s the life of the heart-and-mind that looms so large when it comes to who we are and how we live.
Admittedly, I suppose I can get away with saying that because I’m fortunate to be a physically healthy man. So perhaps I should qualify it by adding, I realize body life looms larger for some than it does for others.
But even those who struggle physically in ways I don’t, I’m guessing they’d agree that a huge part of the struggle, and/or victory, has to do with how they think about things, and process, and interpret.
In any case, that’s what it feels like these days for me. It feels like most of what I’m dealing with has to do with what goes on in my mind, the steady of torrent of thoughts about life and self and others and everything.
And no wonder. So much of what I’m trying to accomplish physically is a matter of doing better with the body so as to free up the mind, to create space for thinking and reflecting and resolving. So that’s probably why I’m more aware of this: I’m living differently in the body (more slowly, more quietly) in such a way that mind-life has moved to the fore, and accelerated.
Several thoughts on this…
(1) One reason I’m aware of this is that my internal torrent isn’t pretty. So much negativity. About life and self and others and everything. Especially others. I don’t want to go on like this. I do want to be like this. How do I change this?
(2) To be clear, the idea is not that the body is bad. This isn’t some ancient Greek philosophical mindset, charging that the body is the prison of the soul from which the soul longs to be, and will be, eternally liberated. No, the body is good. And yet it is true that the mind is…higher, and therefore that it’s a good thing to order one’s physical life so as to serve the mental and emotional life.
(3) In the grand scheme of things, what will this lead to? How much will this gain me? Better body-life freeing up more mind-space in the course of a day. That’s great. And it’s been fruitful. And it’s led to good further steps. But all of that’s micro. Is there a way to experience this on the macro level? Should there be some culturally recognized rite of passage in which a person who turns -0 is allowed to take three months to disappear and figure life out before returning to run the home stretch? Put another way, how much can I realistically expect to gain, and change, if this stays a matter of daily routines and nothing more? It’s like the difference between the weekly Sabbath (micro) and the once-every-seven-years sabbatical (macro). Don’t we need the latter, as well as the former?
But then I come back to the encouragement I’ve tried to offer myself before. Don’t despise small things. These changes are good. And be patient. Even micro changes can lead to macro changes—without having to take a months-long sabbatical. Give it time. Ask yourself this question in a year and see where things stand.