"This is happiness"
A mantra for everyday tasks
I'm David Gasca and this is Mystical Silicon, a weekly newsletter on mindfulness, how to make the world more alive, and a variety of other things I find interesting.
Picture this: after months of dreaming, one day you finally decide to travel to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It takes a bit of time to get there – you need to take multiple planes and a bus. Once you finally arrive in the beautiful hotel, you change into your swimsuit and go down to the golden sand beach. You spot a chair right next to the ocean. You sit down, put down your bag, and look out onto the azure waters with the sun about to set, and then… you open your phone and start scrolling Instagram to see what other people are up to.
Having been to a few beautiful beaches recently, I can confidently say almost everyone does a version of this activity. Maybe it’s not Instagram, but rather TikTok or Twitter or email or the New York Times – but without fail, almost everyone puts a little screen between themselves and the world around them, even after having traveled thousands of miles to some of the most beautiful places in the world.
If I could wave a wand and put up a sign on these beaches, it would read: “You can put away your phone now. You’ve made it! You are here! You don’t need to be anywhere else...”
But of course, we are human. This is natural. We always want more.
From my post on Monotasking:
One of the tools Thich Nhat Hanh gives for present awareness is to constantly ask yourself the question “What am I doing?” Less in the “what am I doing with my life?”-existential-kind-of-way, but more in the very literal “what am I actually doing right this instant?”
Right now I am typing. Later the answer will be “I am turning on the faucet”, “I am brushing my son’s teeth”, “I am folding clothes”, “I am walking down the stairs.”
Throughout a day you do hundreds of things. By actually immersing yourself in the present awareness of each moment life becomes infinitely richer.
Focusing on “what am I doing” is effectively the complete opposite of multi-tasking - it’s radical monotasking.
You’ll often hear Zen sayings such as “It’s all quite simple. When you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep.” It’s all the same refrain - don’t multi-task. Focus on the present moment. And more radical than that, focus on *this exact* moment and not the moment in theory - in other words, the answer is not “I’m cooking.” The answer is “I’m holding this knife in my hand and I am cutting into this cucumber and I can feel, hear and see it fully.”
There is a mantra I use often nowadays to center myself as I go about life: “This is happiness,” I will tell myself, over and over and over…
If I’m taking care of my kids, wiping poo, cleaning food off the floor, brushing teeth: “This is happiness.”
If I’m washing or putting away dishes for the fifth time in a day: “This is happiness.”
If I’m folding yet another load of laundry: “This is happiness.”
Mindfully eating: “This is happiness.”
Most of the time it’s hard to find happiness in these activities: “This isn’t happiness,” my mind tells me. “This is tedious busy work. {X activity} is boring. I would rather {be watching TV, reading a book, using Twitter, going for a run}.” But I have experienced mindful living enough now to know that my brain is swimming in its own thoughts – “If today was my last day on earth,” I ask myself, “how happy would I be to re-live this moment?” And this one question washes away so much noise...
When my kids are old and out of the house, how much will I miss brushing their teeth? How much will I miss folding their laundry? This precious moment of their lives is a jewel!
Often I’m tired and hungry and I just want my kids to put on their shoes so we can leave the house - but then I remember this moment too is happiness. If I can see it as something to savor, I re-ground myself. Look at their little shoes and little jackets! What joy!
This reframing grounds me all day, every day: How blessed am I to have this food and these dishes?! And with what joy will I think back to this moment?! How blessed am I to have a healthy body that can even put away the dishes?! How blessed to have these eyes, this skin and this life?!
If I can’t see this truth, it’s a sign I need to re-center and re-calibrate to the beauty that surrounds me.
If I don’t appreciate the beauty in the wind, and the sound of the rain, I know I am moving too fast. Samatha (stopping) is the first step of mindfulness. Stopping and moving slowly is necessary to create space. I find walking meditation is one of the most powerful ways of awakening me to what is right in front of my eyes as it literally stops me in my step.
As I type these words, reflecting on a rough week for so many of my friends, I find this mantra invaluable. Re-center to be grateful for every moment and every breath.
This is happiness.
PS - In writing this post, I found this Thich Nhat Hanh lecture that touches on similar themes but goes much further than this post.
Love this so much - I will definitely be reminding myself "this is happiness." I find myself looking for purpose and something bigger all the time and sometimes just being alive and breathing in this moment needs to be enough. I know this will help me be more mindful and more content! Thank you for this wonderful reminder!
In my drinking days (now a thing of the past) I used to experience insanely happy hangovers. When walking in a fuzz around a park in autumn or strolling down a busy shopping street. The ache of recovery from mild poisoning and dehydration of the night before making me focus just on the experience of still being there. This episode was my fave so far ☺️