Mindful Living- The Invisible Gorilla
If a gorilla moved into our home and sat at our dinner table every night- honestly, chances are that I may not notice, might even make him tea. Maybe on Sunday morning when it gets into the car with us as we head out to church, I might eventually notice— at which point, I'd scream until the entire city wakes and then insist respectfully that it take bus.
Thankfully, no gorillas have made it past the front door (at least, I don't think so), though we'll never know. Many times I realize I miss things happening around me because I'm so busy and absorbed into my routine that I really don't notice important and even sometimes, not-so-important things (which have a way of suddenly becoming important).
If you are like me, prepare to be pacified.
In this video, psychologists perform a test to analyze the intuition and minds of observers. The experiment involves an actual gorilla and they go on to prove that the human intuition sees what it expects to see and misses a whole lot of incidents while we focus on tasks at hand. We just aren't particularly mindful about our activities as human beings. [Remember when we talked about apes taking over the world because human aren't paying attention?]
The world is moving so fast, if I didn't know better I'd think it was spinning off its axis and everything was moving at 16x fast forward. It's important to take breathers, like I suggested to Charly once. Mindful living is in, guys. We have to do things deliberately and consciously.
We have to constantly be in a "Earth-to-*insert your name*" state-of-mind; aware that our tasks, the ones we love on and have around are worthy of our attention.
In all things be mindful:
Mindful eating(chew slow);
Mindful sex (hey!);
Mindful loving;
Mindful dates (let your phone kiss the table);
Mindful worship (high-five, God);
Mindful driving (buh-bye Pokémon);
Mindful chilling with your family;
Mindful voting (Aye, Americans);
Mindful spending (or risk a lean piggy bank)
Mindful working (put your mind and back into it)
Mindful speaking (every word is a gift)
Mindful writing;
Mindful socializing;
Mindful everything! Let's watch that gorilla try and break in with all that mindfulness.
What would you like to be more mindful in? Would love to know your thoughts. If it's mindful sex, just nod where you are, we see ya!
Blogged sitting on Ed's lap, recovering from a cold. Sniff. Wait, is that a gorilla?!
