Posts Tagged ‘city life’

The mindful walk home

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016 | Health & Wellbeing

city-street

My mindfulness book has recommended that I do one thing a day and really concentrate on it. I decided to do my walk home. I usually listen to an audiobook on the walk to and from work, so I decided to skip one of those and ‘be mindful’. Evening made the most sense as there was more light.

Here is what I noticed:

Not thinking about things is really difficult

Like super-difficult. My mind has no off switch. It wants to think about things. They are loads of things to think about. It doesn’t even need to search for things: there are already a bunch of topics rolling around in there that need some CPU time. How is one supposed to banish it all? I suppose that is the exercise.

The world is really noisy

Cars, planes, trains, alarms. They all make loads of noise. And when you are not allowed to think about anything, you think about that. It occurs to me that train tracks properly run alongside rivers because rivers have the flattest and most consistent ascent. However, that means the one potential haven of peace and quiet in cities often has trains running alongside it. The mode of transport I passed most frequently was the canal boat: all of which were silent.

I miss my thinking time

My mind jumps from topic to topic, but I actually enjoy most of the thoughts. My walk is good imagination time. I don’t really want to experience the world. It’s Leeds. It’s cold, dark and full of ugly buildings.

I don’t feel like I usually miss anything

According to the books, people experience this great awakening about how much of life they have been missing out on. I did not experience any of that. I probably did notice things more, but nothing that was interesting or memorable. It was just the regular world that is always there.