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| Terrace at Seven Olives. Lalibela. February 2011. Credit: Mzuriana. |
Many years ago, I did a summer study in Ecuador. It was a collaborative program between Oregon State University and a university in Quito. The most memorable classroom experience from that six-week trip was this:
The professor said to us - "us" being university students from the US - and I'm paraphrasing him from memory:
Americans and Latin Americans have a different view on life. Americans take the view that as long as there are pressing problems in the world, we can't (shouldn't) fully enjoy life. Latin Americans, on the other hand, take the view that we appreciate and actively enjoy all the riches that life has to offer AND we work on the pressing problems.
As a member of two 12-step groups, there's also the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 127:
We have been speaking to you of serious, sometimes tragic
things. ... But we
aren't a glum lot. If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our
existence, they wouldn't want it. We absolutely insist on enjoying
life.
A reason that meditation is the word for 2025 is that there is just so much distress swirling about us. It is a struggle for me to attain and sustain a serenity, to be mindful of each moment, a string of moments, in which there is beauty for any one of my senses, and to know this moment will not recur, so I need to breathe it in, soak in it, while it's there.
A writing meditation practice is a tool I'm employing to live in the moment I have now, to observe, for example, as I type on my laptop keyboard, the movement of my fingers, thumbs, the joints, my wrists, to acknowledge again how that 8th grade typing class I took so many years ago has stood me in such good stead for my life ever after that. I observe the muscle memory my fingers hold of the QWERTY topography, see a flashback of my mother, decades ago, on a black Underwood typewriter on the dining room table, tapping out The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog to check the health of every alpha key.
In the midst of drafting this post, I conducted a writing meditation, noting the physical movement of my fingers, the tension in my forearm, then remembering a Tumblewords session in which the leader of the week prompted us with an example of corporeal writing. A writing meditation is all about our corporeal mindfulness, as our brains work in concert with our fingers and hands to spin thoughts, memories, insights, tears, fears, and the softening of our hearts perhaps.
In my current, neonatal practice of writing meditation:
- I set my timer for five minutes.
- Using a pen on paper, I write whatever comes to mind. Perhaps better said: I write whatever comes out of my mind.
- I notice how my physical body engages in the act of writing.
- I don't censor anything that I'm writing.
- When the timer goes off, I stop writing.
- The end.
Maybe profound insights will result; maybe not. My focus is on the process, not on any outcomes. It's the process, the routine, the ritual itself that is the ... not-purpose.
