Wednesday
Today, I want to discuss holidays, or vacation. This is because today’s topic is mindfulness, and theoretically, it achieves everything that you could want from a vacation, and more. Influential Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and many more endorsed the benefits of mindfulness. Yet, no one takes the time, effort or concern to spare just ten minutes of their day to be mindful. Mindfulness is by no means restricted to meditation, commonly thought of as sitting cross legged on a yoga mat, listening to relaxing music and focusing, with your eyes closed. This is a variation, but not the whole story, and a terrible cliche that shouldn’t even exist. Mindfulness may consist of meditation, but it is simply where you take time to gain self awareness of your own thoughts, sensations and feelings (Stoics refer to these three as ‘impressions’). Hopefully, by taking a step back from your own mind, you can analyse your decisions and judgments with clear reasoning and examine whether or not your responses are just and fair.
When anyone goes on a holiday, what do they hope to achieve? Most people would say that they “want to get away from ‘it all’”, or that they need a break from whatever they are busy doing regularly. However, through interrogation, it becomes clear to see that what they truly seek is mental solace when everything is going against them. They need to step back from their lives and assess whether or not they are doing the right things. Being on vacation simply allows them to conduct this assessment without the additional stress of their work life. But in reality, the pressure will get to them anyway, because no amount of physical distance can free a mind from stress. Mindfulness, as proposed by Stoicism, can. Because mindfulness can do what a vacation cannot – it makes you understand your impressions, but also criticise them, and challenge their validity. The ability to do is arguably one of the most important abilities to develop yourself into an ‘ideal’ human, and to live a good life. This way, you will improve yourself and realise what you are fundamentally doing wrong. A vacation simply leaves you with a bigger workload and belly fat. But don’t get me wrong, I love a nice holiday.
