TL;DR
- The article emphasizes the importance of solitude for mindfulness and mental well-being, highlighting how modern society often prioritizes physical health and full schedules, despite the mind’s critical role in creativity and self-discovery.
- It contrasts the superficial nature of societal norms, such as routine self-care and materialism, with the deeper need for mental clarity and self reflection, which are essential for true personal growth and artistic expression.
- The untrained mind is likened to a restless monkey, with the article advocating for mental discipline and mindfulness practices, such as meditation, to quiet the mind and foster creativity.
- Embracing solitude and self-compassion is presented as a pathway to understanding and regulating one’s emotions, leading to the creation of meaningful art and the sharing of kindness with others.
The Buddha understood it best. The name itself, Buddha, is derived from budh (बुध् ), named so for “awakening from the deep sleep of ignorance”.
We have never been known to treat our minds with as much attention as we pay to our bodies.
Açaï bowls and green juice, Crossfit and Oura rings, fuel and fire for your vessel. Pilates classes of thirty, at two-fifteen, for forty-five minutes. Calorified. Calculated. Logged to the minute and the kilojoule. Self-care, we call it. For the introverts, a wind-down, and a wine down, in bed by eleven with an eye-mask on.
Yet to feel so alone in a sea of people is not to be truly alone. It feels selfish, needy, to demand more and less of the world at the same time.
And where do we place our mental health in all this? To be ignorant of the gift that is the sheer magnitude of the mind is humankind’s biggest shortfall.
There is a reason why we call it heart-to-heart – singular – tête-à-tête, en français, the French for once ranking the heads above the hearts. Mindfulness, above all, is the artist’s best true companion.
The untrained mind is like a monkey, leaping from branch to branch restlessly; relentlessly. We do not make beautiful art out of a hundred what-ifs, a dozen encounters of the empty kind, excuse me, you’re in my way on the subway, how ya doin’, gloomy weather to your neighbour. You can not speak to your soul amidst a crowd. Quiet. Peace. Creativity.
You will learn that you do not miss the inconsequential.
“You cannot heal in the place you got sick” is the adage we use to ease trauma victims into their escape from the pain; the neglect; the Stockholm syndrome; to step ever so bravely into their new normal. Why not heal your mind regardless? To step into a new world of self-discovery is a service to mankind for the greater good in this individualistic rat race era.
Tibetan singing bowls, forest baths, the slow toll of a gong. Yoga by the sunrise, and meditation by candlelight. When you revel in solitude, that’s when you find your voice.
When you only have beautiful thoughts, you can only create beautiful things – but yet far off the ascetic Buddhist path, we love the materialism of beauty and beautiful things. The Bible similarly warns of greed, lust, and envy. They are addictions like no other.
How does one veer off the daily grind and embrace the core of oneself? It is but a Stockholm syndrome in itself. You feel the pressure of adhering to that homogeny; those cookie-cutter should’ves and would’ves, and often in doing so we drown out our own core voices.
By processing your own emotions, you understand how to regulate your innermost self.
Cognition. Art. A Fibonnaci sequence of its own.
Whatever your medicine of choice – the blue of your paintbrush seems brighter, the keys of your typewriter gleam of promise. You learn the gift of compassion, and are kind to yourself and your art. You understand the importance of kindness, and share it with others through your work.
There is no past, or future, only now. And to live in its beauty is of the utmost comfort.
