As I go on, I find that I have less and less to talk about, because things really become simpler.
And looking for a meaningful life seems to be not so much about adding new things, finding something to add to basic life, but really more about removing distractions.
So a lot of things that fill our minds and fill our thoughts, fill our time, fill up our energy, a lot of these things are simply not necessary, and they take us away from really enjoying the best things in life.
The best things in life seem to be very simple.
And so really, I’ve been focusing on simply removing things, rather than adding anything, to the point where I don’t even have anything to talk about.
So just maybe simplifying too far.
But here I am, in a park in downtown Toronto, Queen’s Park, and you can see it’s a beautiful day right near the summer solstice.
The middle of the day.
And it makes me think about the different seasons.
This is a particular season, the midsummer season, where it really stands like as the peak of the year.
Just like midday, noon, is the peak of the day, well, midsummer is the peak of the seasons of the year.
And I heard something about the seasons that I like.
It was a discussion about, in Japanese aesthetics, they really appreciate the seasons.
So they have so many things that bring out the seasons.
And I’ve always enjoyed anything to do with the different times of day, different times of the year, as I have other videos going on about.
And I heard it described in a new way for me, that the advantage of this, the point of this, the value of focusing on things that are seasonal is that it simply helps us to appreciate the moment.
So by focusing on the season it happens to be, and maybe the time of day it happens to be as well, it’s a reminder to just remember that we happen to be in a particular time and place.
So this could be the same for any time of year, any time of day and any season of the year, just anything that reminds us of that helps us to get out of these kind of mental holes, mental trains of thought, where it’s kind of this timeless place, almost like a cave.
A cave really has that timelessness, because when you’re in a cave, it’s absolutely the same at any time of day or year.
So that the metaphor of the cave really brings out the complete isolation from any of these cycles of day and year.
But by remembering the day, the time of day, and the time of year, then we can just get that little bit of a nudge, a little bit of a- maybe it’s a shock, maybe it’s a reminder, that wow, I’m here in this particular moment.
And not necessarily in some kind of generic time, timeless, that my thoughts could go on forever, but I actually just happen to be in this place and time, in this moment.
And that I find to be very helpful.
So what better way than by simply being outside?
The weather itself will teach us this lesson very clearly.
I was about to record this sitting in a room like the last video, but I couldn’t bring myself to record there, because the only way to really do this would be to actually get out here where I can see what it’s like to have this particular day and season.
Middle of the day, middle of the year, this kind of peak season: this is something that can be appreciated out here, where we see the green, we see the sunlight and the green, and we see the park, the forest happening, right now.
So there can be all kinds of different ways we can bring in the seasonality, the way we emphasize different times of day and different times of year.
But the simplest way of all is simply to get outside, and simply to note what’s happening, where we are on those cycles.
You can look at, at least if you have morning, day, evening, night, and you have spring, summer, fall, winter, already there’s four times a day, four seasons.
Combined that’s already 16 different combinations.
Each of those combinations has its unique flavour to it.
And of course we take the 24 hours and 12 months of the year: each of those has its own flavour, that you can have almost 300 different flavours of moment that we keep moving through.
So I hope you enjoy this particular season, and hope you find something to notice about each of these times of day and times of the year that brings a simple reminder that life is happening in this very moment.
And so don’t get stuck in any kind of thinking holes, or on trains of thought leading far away.
We can simply note the nature, and the light, and the colours, and the life that’s happening around us to return to the simple moment.
#seasonal #moment #inthemoment