Ramblings on Mindfulness

I just come back from my link with the real world: the supermarket. 

Noticed again today that many people there look very concentrated while doing their shopping. They often stand and stare deeply interested on descriptions of the odd package of frozen vegetables or mustard glasses. I started to wonder and thought if I am missing out on something extremely important, which I might should do that as well. So I took a box of frozen green beans (so healthy for you!!) and there it was: "green beans, frozen and packed on the field". What a relief - I am doing good in not only buying but also eating those beans and can put my mind to rest on at least this problem!

It appears the latest thing is - or might have been already, as I do not live really in the world outside my triangle between my bed, my office and the supermarket - well, apparently it is MINDFULNESS.

Everyone talks about it and if you browse through the odd women's magazines, there are all the time references of mindful living, mindful eating, mindful dressing and also mindful sleeping and so on - starts to sound to me pretty exhausting. 

Interesting question: Is it possible to be mindfully exhausted? Does it look like Mrs Bennet calling for the smelling salts? Can one mindfully think over a problem without brooding over  fog in the mountains, like in a Caspar David Friedrich painting? It is possible to be mindful when gardening and killing slugs in the dozen - was my mother already mindful, when she worked for hours in the garden in the 1970ies, or was she just planting stupid flowers and vegetables for the bland consumerism of her family???? I wonder. I suppose so. 

If I am really honest with you, I think for a normal woman most probably already NOT multitasking is damned bloody mindful. We are told that cooking soup yourself is mindful and having a bath seems to be mindful as well, especially if you burn several well scented candles in the carefully curated bathroom and do not look at your facebook account at the same time. 

Everybody who has tried to fall asleep in times of turmoil has at least once tried to be mindful: empty minded that is, trying very hard not to hear the traffic outside, not to think about the problems how to pay for that damn electricity bill and worrying about, all at the same time, the children, your mold mother, the friend with cancer, the next school trip and- in the small hours - about oneself and the future, bland prospects. Back to sheep counting, as boring as it is, it works. I will try next time to count the sheep mindfully, acknowledging each of them and sending them on with my best intentions and wishing them well, here and now.

Let's face it, the new thing about mindfulness, hearing colours and feeling the music is not new. Prince Charles has done it for years, talking to flowers and so on and I do admire him for that. Being very mindful another question pops in my head: as he is one of the best well dressed men in the world - at least to me - does this have something to do with mindfullness as well? Could this mean he knew his ties by name and tried not to prefer one over the other, as not to give any reason for jealousy between them? Just a thought.

I believe that in our being of the world wide web just one very clever chap discovered that the time is ripe for asking the vegetables if they are happy and want to be bought by you in the supermarket. I confess, unfortunately I do not hear anything and have, after very hard trying to get into a relation to my carrots, never got any answer from them. Most probably I am not gifted enough, as in so many things.

But: I DO talk to my car ( "good girl, waiting there patiently for me at the end of the day in the garage") and have been know to have meaningful conversations with my much missed and beloved pug Mick. I smile at flowers and watch at the birds in the early morning, when walking to the train station. I always though I might be bonkers, but no, I have most probably been again well ahead of everybody else.
Now I will very mindfully cook soup. And will try to ignore the screaming vegetables...

So, here we are again.

It seems yesterday, but in fact I have not written on this blog for much more than a year. Almost two years, when I come to think of it, at least!

I have been busy in the meantime though. I changed job a gear up, have buried my second pug, have been divorced, have turned 50 (why did nobody tell me that 50 is such much more fun than the drab 40ies??), have said good bye to friends who moved abroad and are being sorely, terribly missed, have met wonderful new friends and cousins, have been trying to rush around Europe to see friends and family and now I have on of my boys finished at university, a second already gone for a year, my daughter starting in September her last year in school and my home population therefore is devoid of dogs and shrunk to a mere 50% reporting to duty for the shopping-at-the-supermarket-carrier-service. 

Life changes, and rightly so. I woke up this morning and thought: this cannot go on like it did. I am 50 now, most probably over the first half of my life ( touch wood, the old body is ailing but coping, and I wonder if I ever will loose those horrid kilos again - anybody out there for giving me some sort of encouragement?) is over and if I sit quietly - almost never - in a corner and stare at not existing goats in my garden, then the thought persistently coming back to my poor fluttered brain is that I still have so much to do/see/write/meet/get on with and wonder how to fit all those bucket-list things into a very busy life?

Then you will ask: what on earth is she busy with? Children on their way out and seemingly promising to turn out well, job secured and happy with, settling into old age comfortably, surrounded by friends and family -  what is there to be busy about?

Of course I am off the hook with the baby business. I see it all around me and have started to campaign ferociously to give all the support needed to those young mothers who must do it all: having the babies, obviously, but also having a job and being the wonderful wives they have been chosen for in the first place. 

But then, I think, why not starting to do some serious lobbying for the girls MY age???? But telling them what? To use every possible opportunity to get a babysitter?? Not really - and to do what??  

The fact is:  Now is the time for the Gap Years of The Older Woman (which age should we start with?)... no toddlers around for the moment.

Ok. This thing about campaigning for "The Older Woman and Her Handbag" needs some more thought and most probably more time, which I do not really have, considering that I had to restart a life with two dogs, four children and a nonexistent career a couple of years ago. But it might be a start already to get back and take the Red Handbag out of its dust cover, and looking into it, adapting it perhaps a little bit for the "Safe Side of The Fifties." Or better "The Right Side of the 50ies"!

So, I do not promise anything. But the fun of writing, as I do now, with a hot cup of coffee (please note: not a mug, but a huge wonderful swimming pool of a Wedgewood Edme Plain Cup!!) is so real, that I endeavor to get back to this blog more often. If someone out there reads it or not.

Cheers!!!

Jola