Off the blocks

3:59 – no can do

I tried an experiment: could I listen to a transcendently beautiful piece of music, something that I had only heard once before, something that I was desperate to hear again, something only 3 minutes and 59 seconds long and focus only on it. No, I couldn’t. Within  7 seconds my mind was launched outward to thoughts of writing about the experiment till I pulled it back in to home base for another few seconds stay.

This is, of course, not new news. Any one who has meditated at all is familiar with “monkey mind,” the never mentally sitting still, never allowing the mind to relax and just be, as they say, in the moment. I’ve read the books and the idea seems profoundly true: why worry about the future , if I’m not living this moment consciously; why buy another record if I don’t listen to the ones I have, why have seconds when I can’t remember tasting any of the firsts?

When things go bad, some turn to the Church; I turn to meditating. Once things are better, I find I have no time for it. It’s boring to me. I question whether it works. Now I am sick again and I realize that I’ve gone from being a person who is never or rarely sick to someone who seems to be sick a lot. I do not accept age as the cause unless it is the King Learian karma of being old and not yet wise.

As a child I never understood “I want my cake and eat it too.” Only recently has this hit home to me. I want to do everything I want to do and I want to do everything I want to do everyday. I want to have wine with dinner everyday and every morning I want to wake both healthier and more awake so I can be a greater athlete — well, every day. It’s funny.