Full moon fuckery must be in full effect because early yesterday morning I gave myself a stiff neck simply trying to put my head through a shirt without messing up my hair. I felt the sudden twinge in my neck immediately, and the dull pain soon began to spread. By the time I got to work I was in robot motion, where your whole upper body has to move when you turn your head. It was a reminder to be more careful in my advancing age, something I’ve been more mindful of in the past few years but always seem to forget when going about the motions of daily life. Getting older is not for the faint of heart or weak of will or unobservant of circumstance.
It was also a reminder to be mindful in a more general sense. For me, focusing on what is immediately around us, and what is immediately happening, is the essence of mindfulness – it occupies the space where worry and stress would otherwise arise. My formal and structured daily meditations help, but being mindful on a more constant level is often more helpful. It’s easy to be calm and at peace for fifteen minutes when sitting lotus-style beside a burning stick of palo santo incense – how to translate that peace and calm into the majority of the day is the more valuable practice. It also bleeds into the idea of thinking – or too-often overthinking ñ that derails the calmest of countenances.
As our days become increasingly saturated with dismay and uncertainty, the only thing we might possibly be able to control is our reaction and perception to the world around us. If we are able to find focus and meaning in the actual moment at hand, it occupies the mind and prevents all the dangerous and frightening what-ifs from entering that space. (My head can only focus on so much these days.) And so I take this stiff neck as a persistent, if slightly bothersome, reminder to focus on the moment right before me, at what is going on in the here and now. I notice the sting when I turn, and I have to smile at something my younger self would have called the motions of an old man. I acknowledge the pain, let the comparison to the past fade, and go back to the doings of the day.
