A happy Monday to you.
Another short one this week, and the next few in all likelihood, as I pack my life in London into cupboard boxes and move a few inches southward, on a map, that is.
I’m setting of on an adventure and you can all come with if you fancy it, all you have to do is keep reading.
But if you’re anything like me then you find packing and sorting a particularly tedious chore, a specifically heinous bore.
I find myself resenting the task for getting in the way of more pleasurable experiencesand then I stop, and I remember that those make-believe pleasures are just in my head and don’t exist in the slightest and what exists is simply this, this right now, assembling boxes and fixing them with Sellotape and packing all my things away.
And so rather than wish this time away, I decide to play a game—I focus entirely on exactly what I’m doing rather than allow my mind to wander into ruin. I pay close attention to the feel of the cardboard as I fold it, the taste of the tape as I bite it, the dust on the tops of the books as I move them.
And suddenly it’s no chore at all because I’m back here in the moment and being so is both simple and delightful.
As the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris says, there’s no such thing as boring. If you’re bored it just means you’re not paying close enough attention.
Pay attention to anything and its intrinsic qualia will fill your senses and ease all thought or tension to be anywhere other than here. Try to avoid it, mind, and you’ll soon find peace of mind is rather hard to find.
But pay attention and even packing boxes is the adventure.
Enjoy yours, whatever it is.
With love,
Jake x
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