Simple Pleasures

July 6, 2015 by Ray Morgan

Simple Pleasures

I'm currently reading Ruby Wax's brilliant book Taming the Mind. It's about mindfulness, and mental health, and is delivered in a typically amusing Ruby Wax style that is both frank and relateable. She talks a lot about taming the mind to be 'mindful' during our busy lives to stop bad thoughts and keep depression and anxiety at bay.

I laughed out loud at one particular point where she describes how we try to 'relax' but end up thinking a stream of random thoughts including "Why did my mother never let me have a real Christmas tree? I need to buy shampoo. I hate my feet." - I laughed because I could relate to it. I lie in bed at night, supposedly trying to wind down, but my mind is a rollercoaster of reminders, thoughts, fears, memories. It's exhausting. What Wax does is encourage you to have moments of mindfulness where you focus on something - ie. your breathing - and when Christmas tree/shampoo/feet thoughts invade that moment, you acknowledge them but go back to the mindful thought afterwards. That is taming your mind.

It also got me thinking about how we don't stop and appreciate small things any more. I'm not talking about when your Instagram picture of your perfect liquid eyeliner swish (Amaro filter) gets over 11 likes, or when Amazon tells you by email AND text that your Bridget Christie autobiography is going to be delivered today (although both things do give joy). I'm talking about sitting on the beach and watching how the estuary looks like a handful of sequins have been thrown at it. Breaking off a piece of chocolate - this is on Ruby's advice - and actually sitting and tasting the flavours and noticing the texture, not hulking down the whole bar before your next meeting.

I have a very dear friend who a loves a book called Simple Abundance. It's about just that: appreciating small things. Things that might seem insignificant and silly, frivolous, whimsical, unimportant. They're not; they're special. Looking through photographs (real ones, guys, not swiping through my iPad). Listening to a record and not doing anything else at the same time. Making a risotto and not Whatsapping my Mum a picture of it - just standing, stirring it and noticing all the delicious smells.

We live in a world where work emails ping through over the weekends, causing you to remember something you forgot to do on Friday, creating a tiny buzz of stress in your stomach when really you should be settling down to play Scrabble with your other half who has just made a cafetiere of your favourite coffee. Where not getting a response from that hilarious tweet you just sent makes you keep checking back on your phone just in case someone pressed the little yellow star and you hadn't noticed. Where an actual adult tantrum can happen when the American version of Netflix you illegally downloaded SUDDENLY STOPS WORKING and you've not even made it through the first season of Cheers yet, let alone all those episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race you need to catch up on. How else will you lol when Mama Ru says "Condragulations" for the fiftieth time? Girl...

We need to kick back, and take stock. Put down the luminous devices. Enjoy the little things. We have enough stress already, don't we?

My top 5 ways to unwind that don't involve patchouli or yoga mats:

1. Sea swimming. You know I'm evangelical about this shizz.
2. Having a picnic indoors. Rug on the floor, good cheese, maybe a sneaky wine. No wasps!
3. Scrabble or Chess. Contemplative, quiet. Unless you start fighting over the use of the Q.
4. Listening to records. Something about the ritual of it that relaxes me.
5. Cross stitching. This is like meditation for me. Apart from the knots. I love sewing apart from the knots.