In my martial arts training, we learned to focus on the here and now, rather than become distracted by the past or future. While this act of deliberate concentration is valuable in many instances, I have been considering what happens when we focus on the same thing for too long. I sometimes find myself so caught up in emotional or stressful situations that all my thoughts, actions and emotions are centered around that actual moment.

I mean it literally when I say that the world ceases to exist in those moments. What do I mean by this? I mean that those other six billion plus people on the globe occupy no place in my mind. Time, places, and people are all gone.

If you still don’t understand what I mean, let me propose a simple exercise. This works especially well when you are a particularly emotional situation; when your self becomes the center of the universe, if only for a short while. At a time like that, consider that the rest of the world is alive and in motion. People are going about their lives wrapped up in their own pleasures and anxieties. Thousands of airplanes are in the sky ferrying people from one locale to another. Millions of conversations are zipping through the air (and through you) as they connect one caller to another. Information itself is caught up in the mighty Internet highway and propagates itself to the world.

If you want to take this exercise a step further, try to remember a place of exceptional beauty where you have been before. This place might be a natural splendor, or even a mundane location such as your childhood house, your old school, etc. Try to imagine this place in as much detail as possible. For example, I recently visited Point Reyes, and a friend and I hiked through an amazing hilltop trail, flanked on one side by the ocean and rolling hills on the other. Adding to our already glorious surrounding, tons of fog blew up the hillside from the ocean and spilled in the vast valleys below. Right now, I can imagine myself there (it helps that I was just there last weekend). I can picture that yellow flower on the ground where we took a break being gently pushed by the sea breeze this very instant. I can picture those grey rocks being pounded by the waves of the mighty Pacific Ocean right now. I can see that roly poly still crawling along the dusty path.

Thanks for sticking with this admittedly stream of consciousness post, and I hope it had some semblance of sense and order.

Josh

I would like to apologize for straying from the principles I set out for TWB. By this, I mean mostly reporting on events in my life and providing very little for us to think about. I check the “Blog Stats” every so often, and I see about 3-5 stop by everyday, with occasional dips and spikes. Thus, I feel I should at least post a short update on my situation.

First of all, I should make it clear that my mind is as active as ever, and my silence is not due at all to a dearth of topics. If anything, I tend to think of interesting concepts while on the go, and then forget them once I’m at my computer. Rather, I’ve found that other obligations (research, social, etc) have sapped away all of my time out of the classroom.

I also have not yet found a balance between the temptation  to type out my thoughts as they flow and my obligation to clean up my writing. I would like to introduce an idea that I honestly just thought of a second ago to deal with this problem. If I just want to get my thoughts out and do not want to elaborate or take time organizing it into an eloquent post, I will add this tag to its title to indicate its stream-of-consciousness style… (SOC). These posts will likely either be very short, or be long, rambling, and mostly incoherent. Feel free to contact me if you’d like a clarification or want to discuss the issues further.

That’s all.