distractions – Observations and Misunderstandings

Have you ever got to the end of your coffee and realised you want more. That the desire you had for coffee hasn’t been satiated and you’re not satisfied. As you delve deeper into the thoughts of the moment, that you can actually barely remember drinking the coffee at all. If that is the case there’s a good chance you were also doing something else while drinking the coffee. Perhaps working on your laptop. Maybe drinking your coffee on a long road trip. Or even grabbing a quick sip while doing some gardening. Busy to such an extent we didn’t give even a momentary awareness to the thing we desired, merely hoping to absorb it’s energy induced benefits.

It can’t just be the need to fill the caffeine addicted desire that makes us crave the cup, there must be something else involved like experiencing the taste and the sensations that consuming it provide. If you drink your coffee while completing whatever task you are fulfilling then this lack of focus and awareness of the act of enjoying and appreciating the coffee will be missed and arguably while it may be in your body, you may as well have not even drunk the coffee at all.

You forgot to enjoy the moment you very nearly created, this lack of presence denies existence itself. I’ll have another please.

We live in a world that moves at such speeds that we often don’t allow ourselves the necessary pleasure of just stopping and taking that five minutes to really observe the coffee and appreciate the satiating joy it can provide. So busy we don’t even have five minutes. But we always have five minutes, no one is truly that busy. We just didn’t notice that we wasted that five minutes robotically doing something else. Facebook perhaps.

In the past when I smoked I would have similar realisations. You crave a cigarette but you desire the whole experience not just the nicotine. I would sometimes roll one ‘for the walk’ but while there was a different satisfaction from that version, you still ended up fancying another upon arrival at the destination. There was something that hadn’t been entirely fulfilling about that version of the cigarette, just as there is something lacking from the coffee you forget you’re drinking.

We are so full of distractions. Perhaps we can use things like coffee or cigarettes, both together even, to use as markers to just take that five minutes to bring awareness to our surroundings, thoughts and the moment we’re experiencing. Just five minutes, just the length of time it takes to drink the coffee. There’s thousands of years of wisdom on being present, it can’t all be worthless now we have smart phones.

It is interesting what methods people use to work or be creative. I remember I used to know someone who when studying preferred to be in busy noisy areas as it allowed her to concentrate; so the cafe section of the library over the quiet floor. I’ve often known people to play music while they study as it seems to help them focus and there are numerous studies backing this up. I have tried with classical music, which is usually the style of choice in these research, and found that of all types of sounds I could listen to it is probably the one that helps the most. It has something to do with the affect it has on your brain or something like that, the internet could probably inform me accurately but I am lazy to check. Certain music though I can’t study or write with and that is when I can hear words because I find them distracting as I follow along. In reality though I’m a silence man. I wonder what it is that leads one person to favour one way over another. I can only imagine it has something to do with upbringing and the environment you grew up studying in. My inability to study and use any possible excuse to be distracted probably led me to my silent necessities and I imagine someone who grew up in a noisy domestic environment but still studied around this probably searches this out.

That is the setting though but what about using certain things to assist us. I’ve met many a sophisticated wanker who loves the affect a glass of red wine has alongside a good book or while scribbling down words. He takes a sip out of his cup of red wine before continuing. Certainly though too much alcohol only hinders this process but I remember reading something a few years back that suggested the best combination was to have an alcoholic drink to relax the mind subsequently allowing it to be more creative and then a cup of coffee to give it the energy and focus required to implement the creativity. It’s not impossible to see some validity in this. I sometimes enjoy a little smoke and then attempt to write down some thoughts, but I could never study this way as the mind is all over the place. Equally if I am attempting to write something that I don’t want to be illegible nonsense despite appearing to be wisdom at the time then I really couldn’t smoke. I could though play the guitar as I just like to mess around on that and do it for the pleasure in the moment not with the intention of attempting to create anything for anyone else. I don’t though feel the desire to pick it up when sober so definitely smoking helps this.

It’s just interesting because everybody is so different and requires such different surroundings to achieve the same end result. We are also so varied in the way differing things affect us and how we manage to respond to them in regards alternate versions of output. Maybe I should have a smoke one day and try writing something on here, that could be an interesting addition, it may also be pretty obvious but also magically creative. It is just fascinating to see how different everyone is and depressing to see how we try and force everyone into boxes or group them all into either black or white. Education has a lot to do with this and it’s always very interesting to meet people who have been through alternative types of schooling because they have such different ways of resolving issues that arise. Time has many answers, hopefully we someday stumble upon the one which allows us to discover whichever shade of grey we are in between.

Tag: distractions

Different Shades Of Grey