Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a movie almost everyone has watched. But, if you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert, here’s what you need to know for the purposes of this blog post. In the movie, Ferris Bueller and two of his high school friends play hooky and skip a day of school. They galivant around town engaging in all sorts of adventures, and many times throughout the movie Ferris pauses and breaks the “fourth wall,” talking directly to the camera about what he (or one of his friends) was experiencing at that very moment. At the end of the movie, Ferris utters the famous quote, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Being Present
Ferris Bueller’s quote can essentially be boiled down to two words, “be present.” He advises us to occasionally (or more than occasionally) stop what we are doing so we can observe and appreciate each element of our current experience.
In last week’s blog, I mentioned the value of meditation and how it might help you “know yourself” better. Meditation, as we discussed, can help you understand the “why” behind your emotions and thoughts, it can help you manage physical and emotional pain, and it can help you connect with the world around you. All these benefits are vital to understanding your unique place and role in the world. To experience the benefits of meditation, however, you don’t necessarily have to block out 15 minutes to sit and breathe. You can be mindful throughout the day! And that has many benefits as well.
You may be thinking to yourself right now, “That sounds great and wise and all, but I’m busy. Who has time for that? I have work to do, people to talk to, deadlines to meet… I don’t have time to notice every detail of my water bottle, the taste of the food I eat, or the shapes of the trees and clouds on my way to work. What good does noticing those things do anyway?”
Well, I’m glad you asked!
The Benefits of Mindfulness
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes, “Seeing the small is called clarity.” When you are mindful, when you take a moment to pause and notice the minutia of life, you are seeing the details of reality. You are seeing the small. And when you see “the small,” you begin to see reality for what it is, not what you wish it to be.
When we view “reality as it is,” we open ourselves up to a new understanding of our relationship with the world. We see that all our suffering (yes, all of it) is caused by the gap between our expectations—in other words, our desire for how things should be—and the reality of the way things are. For example, we get angry when our favorite sports team loses in the playoffs because we expected or desired that they would not lose. When we notice the details about how we are feeling, we can let go of the idea in our head that our favorite team losing caused our anger. Our anger is not the result of the team losing, it’s the result of the gap between our expectations and reality.
This is an important realization. We cause our emotions, and thus we control their effects on us. By accepting the way things are instead of how we wish them to be, our happiness and overall mood will elevate.
Let’s go back to our example of your favorite sports team losing. Imagine you recognized that feeling of anger that flashed over you when the buzzer sounded for what it was: your reaction to the gap between your desires and reality. After making this realization, you then have a choice to make. You could choose to let the anger ruin your mood and sour the entire experience of watching the game, or you could consider how much fun it was watching the team compete and how amazing it was to be able to watch the event. Wouldn’t noticing these things put you in a better, more grateful mood? That is called seeing the small.
All emotions can be examined in the same way. When we examine emotions, we can better understand why we have them. We can free ourselves from their stranglehold and make better decisions. When we fail that math test and feel dejected, we can examine our emotion and realize that we are feeling this way because we care about doing well. However, if we don’t examine our emotions, we may get frustrated and give up on math. We might say, “Math is just not my strong suit,” and use this excuse to avoid the way things are. If we took the time to see our emotions for what they are, we would realize we do care about math. Knowing this, we can decide that going forward we will study more and not give up on math altogether.
This lesson was perhaps best summed up by Eric Weiner in his book, The Socrates Express, in which the author describes these initial reactions of anger or dejection not as emotions but reflexes. He writes:
“It becomes an emotion when you assent to it. When you assent, you elevate its status from reflex to passion. All of this happens quickly, in a flash, but none of it happens without our permission. Every time we choose to honor, and amplify, these negative proto passions we are choosing unhappiness. Why in the world, the stoics ask, would you want to do that?”
Learning about the “Big”
Through seeing the small, we can also understand the “big.” This is a fact established in every scientific discipline. Physicists study atoms to understand the composition of planets and stars, psychologists study individuals to understand how the brain works in all humans, and sociologists study the family unit to understand how society functions.
Similarly, by seeing the small in our life we can better understand ourselves and others. This will lead to not only greater happiness for ourselves, but also better relationships with our friends, loved ones, acquaintances, and strangers.
For example, we can see the small but profound fact, that just like us, everyone has a right to be happy. Understanding this, we can summon compassion when we are dealing with someone who is being particularly difficult. We can see a difficult person not as someone who is causing us suffering, but rather as someone who is suffering themselves. Then, we can reflect on how much we dislike suffering and realize that they must dislike suffering as well. Naturally, we will then genuinely feel compassionate and wish this person to be relieved of their suffering. And we will do what we can do help alleviate their suffering.
Just by your individual efforts to “see the small,” you can help both yourself and others be happy.
Seeing Beauty
It’s easy to appreciate the beauty of nature when watching the show Planet Earth, but the real magic happens when you recognize there’s beauty everywhere, not just in the colorful flowers and animals of the rainforest. When you practice mindfulness, you notice beauty in everything. You realize that simple is good. Simple is beautiful.
In her poem Everything Good is Simple, Nikki Giovanni writes:
“Everything good is simple: a soft-boiled egg… toast fresh from the oven with a pat of butter swimming in the center… steam off a cup of black coffee.
Everything simple is good: Lines in a yellow legal pad… dimples defining a smile… a square of gray cashmere that can be a scarf.”
Take a moment right now and visualize three simple things that you find beautiful… ok, done? Recognizing those three simple things makes you feel better, doesn’t it? Life is beautiful, why not take notice?
Life is Short
Maybe, you are still reluctant to adopt this practice of being mindful. Maybe, you are thinking “this sounds great, but my life is pretty good and I’m fairly happy at the moment, I don’t think I need to be mindful.” Or let’s pretend for a moment that everything I said above was false: There are no intellectual or emotional benefits to being mindful. And life is not full of small beauties, it’s painstakingly dull. In either case, I believe it would still be worth it to take Ferris Beuller’s advice. Put simply, we should try to be present because it’s the best option we have!
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius gives himself the following command:
“Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already or is impossible to see.”
All we have is this present moment. Experience it! A life without mindfulness is a life reduced to going through the motions. A life whose course is beholden to the whim of your emotions. A life that cringes at the past and worries about the future.
In one of my favorite books, Walking to Listen, the author, Andrew Forsthoefel, had this to say:
“When you worry, you reject the offering life is giving you. To freak out is to be distracted and to be distracted is to miss the harvest of life.” I love that quote. Life is short, why waste it worrying?
When I was in high school and I heard the phrase, “live life to the fullest,” my mind immediately conjured up images of thrill seekers. The people who do things like bungy-jumping, skydiving, or even exploring abandoned psychiatric centers! Now, when I think of living life to the fullest, I think of being mindful. I think of not worrying about the future and simply acting in harmony with whatever comes in my life’s path. I think of letting go of the humiliation of those moments of when I did something embarrassing in 9th grade. I think of seeing the small.
So, let’s all take a moment to be mindful right now. Stop and look at the objects in your view, what do you see? Listen closely to the background noise, what do you hear? Notice the texture of the fabric of your clothes, how does it feel?
To quote Marcus Aurelius, “Give yourself a gift: the present moment.”
What do you notice?