I’ve been trying to get at the real meaning behind mindfulness for some time. The mantra seems simple — to be present, “in the moment.” Yet for all the courses, books and retreats out there, it seems like there’s a rehash of something from our past. Something that’s always been a part of our lives but has faded into the background. It was only recently that this passage from “The Miracle of Mindfulness” by Thich Nhat Hanh took me back to waiting at the bus stop.

”… One night, Jim asked if he might do the dishes. I said, ‘Go ahead, but if you wash the dishes, you must know the way to wash them… There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.’”

Growing up in India, I relied on public transportation a fair bit. We had one vehicle in the family and my dad used it to commute to work. Waiting at the bus stop was a routine activity. There were no phones or fidget spinners. Just traffic, the heat of the Delhi summer beating on asphalt, and other people waiting. The only game I’d play to kill time was to read the number off every approaching bus from as far as possible. The farther away I could accurately read what bus was approaching, the more “points” I’d win. Cheap dopamine hits! It was hard to do anything other than wait.

Patience used to be an autonomic virtue. In today’s fast paced, digital world, it needs to be manufactured. Jennifer Roberts, American art historian, argues for teaching methods that deliberately decelerate the learning process.

”… I would argue that these are the kind of practices that now most need to be actively engineered by faculty, because they simply are no longer available ‘in nature,’ as it were.” — Jennifer Roberts

But why does slowing down matter?

The psychology of boredom and how our brains cope is fascinating. One hypothesis asserts that in times of boredom, the brain manufactures cognitive activity to prevent slipping into daydreaming. The supporting idea being that daydreaming puts you at risk of survival, from an evolutionary standpoint. After all, you’d not want to be eaten by that tiger in the savannah just because you were daydreaming when bored! The same hypothesis argues for doodling being one of the cognitive activities the brain manufactures to avoid slipping into daydreaming when bored.

But do our brains even get bored today? How many of us are sitting on the couch after a day’s work, not scrolling, or washing the dishes and not thinking about a million other things in life? It’s easy to slip into cognitive overload such that our brains always have something to think about. Our brains are not designed to be bored, but they’re also not designed for over-stimulation. Here’s why it hurts:

Fundamental Attribution Error

This cognitive bias has us believe that others’ behavior is driven by their personality rather than their environment, while convincing ourselves that our own transgressions arise from circumstances beyond our control. One solution to overcoming this bias requires space to think and if that’s not there, snap judgements follow. This can be detrimental to relationships — with friends, family and at work.

Decision Fatigue

How many times have you come home from a long day at work to make more decisions at home? What if some of those decisions are crucial to your life or those of your loved ones? Cognitive overload causes decision fatigue, taking away our ability to be fully involved when it may matter most.

Anxiety

If our brains are always on, that overload can easily turn into a habit, more so if we’re also getting small dopamine hits through the process (e.g. from social media). This makes us more prone to rumination and anxiety because it’s better to worry about something than be bored, right?

Learning

It seems so easy to be an expert on anything today. Watching a few videos or being an “influencer” seems to be misassociated with knowledge. I love this axiom from Jennifer Roberts as part of her decelerated teaching methodology:

“Access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience.”

Mindfulness doesn’t need to involve finding time in an open meadow, under a tree, with the perfect yoga mat. All it requires is for us to embrace boredom, and be fully present in whatever we’re doing, even if that is doing nothing.

Rabbit Holes