The Speed of Mindfulness
In our day and age, mindfulness has been a growing activity among ordinary people. However, mindfulness has always been an issue when it was first introduced to me. The concept of breathing will eventually help you adapt to life is something I never got my head wrapped around. However, after reading Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle I have a different opinion.
Prior to reading the article, the way I saw mindfulness was similar to how other people saw it, as an act of being conscious in the moment to improve yourself. However this definition to me was extremely unclear. I didn’t understand the significance of it. The way I interpreted this is as a time to breathe and an excuse to leave work. As far as benefits goes, close to no benefit personally, and any experience was just short term, and it would matter little in my day.
The general message is pretty straightforward in the article. It follows the hummingbird, it depicts the hummingbird as a fast pacing animal, its heart beats 10 times a second. Life is all about being on the verge of death, or surviving, having a lean heart, and tough veins. It goes on to state that we only have 2 billion heartbeats, and you can, “ spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old”. It then goes on to contrast with a whale’s heart, slow moving, and extremely LARGE. It goes on to say that it is a dedicated animal, traveling solely in pairs once mature. You can hear a whale’s cry across the ocean with such a large heart. Thirdly the human heart, they are extremely fragile to age, they are ,”bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall”. Developing the human character. After investigating these three parts of the articles is something that I found that all of these have similar principles to what mindfulness promoted. For example, all hummingbirds are all about chaos and living on the verge of death. In the end, it causes a short life. In humans, urban life is all about chaos and getting work done, however we have mindfulness. Mindfulness, or taking a breather, is designed so that we can slow down for a moment, and not live such a chaotic life, but a more peaceful one. As a byproduct of this, we nurture our fragile hearts as humans, to acknowledge the things we pick up in life, and develop ourselves to be better versions of ourselves, and have larger hearts. Similarly to whales, once we develop larger hearts, it can create long lasting connections with other people, or things that benefit us the most where your actions will ring out for the rest of your life.
In conclusion, after investigating the Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle, my idea of mindfulness has been disrupted. How I see mindfulness has evolved into something that I can utilize in myself even more as I now have a more clearer understanding of what the activity does. With this in mind, I helped me create a connection with this activity, so in the future I can now practice mindfulness knowing the extent of the full benefits of this activity, in hopes to reach my goals in life, and how all these developments will pile up as I grow older and gain more experience.
