Be Mindful of The Now


If you're on facebook you would know that my family is away. This is the first time in almost 15 years that i have been alone. Really alone. For those that don't know I am blessed wth a beautiful wife and 4 kids. It's a noisy, messy household with laughter, tears and the proverbial "why you home so late?." But not this week. This week was different. This week my family went to Cape Town. I went Home Alone.

So I avoided it.

It's not fun going home to a big empty house. Yes. I was excited about the freedom. Yes. I thought that I would get some sleep. Yes. It seemed like a a wonderful opportunity to catch up on everything. Uninterrupted.

The reality?
I avoided going home. I stopped over at pubs. When I got home, it was exactly the same as as I left it, and I switched on all the lights, radio and every TV in every room. I connected my MacBook and got online as soon as possible. I blogged. I read. I watched CSI. I walked into every room and looked around. I also had a scotch and smoke. Then I ran into every room and jumped around shouting. I didn't go to bed.

Why?
My connection wasn't there. The rhythm was out of sync. My usual routine was interrupted. I had no responsibilities other than tending to myself and our golden labrador, Maddy. It was pretty cool, but also sad. Bittersweet.

The lesson is this: use every moment you have to experience the now. Mine, at the moment, is freedom. But with this freedom I experienced a paradox: I usually long for me-time and now that I have it I urgently need the laughter, tears and noise my family make around me. Although I should be sitting quietly and allow the present moment to simply be - clear headed and meditative, I've chosen the pour another Scotch and get online. This, I think, I will regret when things get busy again. Because being mindful of the now is the only way you can be the architect of your future. And that requires some quiet time.

In the meantime I'm going to run around the rooms again shouting.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

take a deep breath

After writing my version of the Jo'burg chronicle's - a chapter lasting almost six years - I have returned to the Mother City. [ ... meaningful pause] I think the only way to truly appreciate where you are is to have some frame of reference - many many years ago my art lecturer (George - a short and bearded man that always seemed to wear a pair of blue garage overalls) at Rhodes University sat us down and shared this with us: To taste life one needs to develop tastes that are on both sides of the spectrum. Truly decadent and downright awful. The decadence would not be understood if decadence was all you ever had. Granted - I'm still in the honeymoon phase of breathing in this city, and by NO MEANS do I want to create the impression that good 'ole energetic Jozi is 'downright awful' on the contrary BladeRunner City was fantastic - but man the air certainly seems sweeter when you're driving 10m from the Ocean. It's as simple as that for me. Stay tuned for
Read more

Bon Voyage!

Image
I'm off to New Zealand on Sunday. I don't think the idea of international travel has really sunk in yet. We had the usual trouble with booking flight tickets this week ... first we were set to leave Sunday ... then we weren't and the flights had changed to Thursday ... then 12 hours later we were on a different Airline and it was back to Sunday. But I'm not complaining. It's tremendously exciting. I owe all this excitment to Mandy. She did so well meeting her targets at the office that every year we're treated to an International flight somewhere exotic on the house. Last year was Cape Town (a bit close to home but boy what a beautiful place). The year before Mexico. But on Tuesday I should be sipping XXX lager in Auckland, New Zealand. The City of Sails. One of the more important things on my growing itinerary list of 'Things We Must Do!' is to take a 2 hour trip south and sit down amongst the rolling hills of the Shire where Bilbo Baggins celebrated hi
Read more

Why "The Woodshed"?

Because everybody deserves one. Let me explain. The notion of The Woodshed was first introduced to me in John Kao's 1997 book Jamming where he discusses the art and discipline of business creativity. Something that's very close to my heart. In Chapter 5 he discusses the need for clearing a space for creativity and introduces the reader to Charlie Parker's woodshed. Or, more specifically, whenever the great sax player needed to work out new musical concepts, he would withdraw from the usual people, places and things and "go to the woodshed". This may seem an odd phrase, but if considered for a short while you will find that you've probably been to your woodshed without even knowing it. When I was 7 yrs old there was a river a block away from our house in East London. I would run to it every other afternoon and spend the day either trying to catch crabs, doing homework, building bridges or playing in the mud with my Star Wars collection. The spot at the river
Read more