Miniature Mind Musings #8:

Recently, I spoke with a family member who I struggled to catch up with for a longer timespan than I would’ve liked and what struck me was how societal templates filled in on successive days routinely suck our time into a vacuum of seemingly infernal deficiency.

How ‘regular’ life got so complex and involved that it’s hard to find space in our lives for the people and things we WANT to spend time around and doing is top-tier level puzzlement, primarily because many of us have oodles of individual choice.

I thought to myself, “How crazy is that?”

Now I’m thinking, “Someone else gotta see this and feel as incensed as I do!”

What a damaging way to live.

I ended up discussing this with said family member and recalled how many indigenous tribes (upon initial contact) thought humans like us bizarre.

And we are bizarre.

We wash clothes daily/weekly, yet our drawers and closets overflow with excess items to wear. We buy large quantities of food but only consume it faster so it doesn’t last long. We don’t take care of our bodies and exercise enough (or at all) then get upset when they don’t work well and develop illness or injury.

Why aren’t human beings listed under the dictionary definition of dysfunction?

We can wake up after having enough sleep but still be exhausted because the societal stencil we’ve been given had an insidiousness about it that made us glorify productivity and organization with time management to the exclusion of the infinite parts of ourselves that have been asphyxiating inside this wretched routine.

As a young child, I remember swimming once in deep water with armbands, off a popular neighborhood dock. I doggy-paddled like gangbusters to get around until a man from the dock called out,

“You don’t have to paddle like that. Just relax.”

And I did.

Overwhelmed with amazement I was, that I could just float, suspended with no exertion whatsoever.

Deep water had always elicited the same behavioral response in me.

Fear…my feet can’t touch the bottom.

Logic (or rather physics) never entered my thought process.

Recalled lessons can be a godsend.

My past weeks/months have been too busy for me to nurture my spirit in the way that I am used to doing. As a result, I’ve made conscious decisions for immediate change.

Yes, the groceries needed buying, the house cleaning, the emails responding, and the errands running. But what happens, if for the time being…I do none of them?

Will everyone starve today?

Rats materialize out of thin air en masse right now?

Contacts tell me to jump off the partnership bridge of no return since I failed to reply this instant?

My existence end in a fiery inferno because I neglected to post that package today?

When life feels like day-after-day in never-ending succession of tasks and you just need to catch your breath, not only can you. You are allowed.

You must.

I did.

Me: This is one of the BEST games of “Simon Says” you will ever play. Breathe and live from your soul, “The Dani Writer says.” Always.

You: *In deep reflection and re-evaluation of this day/week/month/year*

“Oooooh!” and “Aaahh!” moments…

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Originally published in the Honest Perspective on Medium