Staying Awake

Every day for many many days now, there are four or five political mailers in my mailbox—large, thick, shiny postcards telling me to vote for someone or not vote for something or other.  My ballot was filled and sealed a week ago and I haven’t read any of those mailers, even before I voted—they all go straight into recycling.  I alternate between feeling irritated, frustrated, sad, and despairing and it gets to be more the longer it goes on.  It’s true that sometimes I just recycle them and don’t really feel anything or pay attention.

I can’t help but wonder if anyone has done any research to see if mailing all this stuff out has any positive effect.  Or is it just that that is what they’ve always done and they feel like they need to do something, so they keep doing it?  Of course, the only way I can even generate that possible explanation is because I know about that.  One could argue that the only reason I get upset with those mailers is because they remind me of how unconscious and small-minded I am sometimes. 

So now what am I going to do?  I guess I am going to pay attention.  If I want the world to have more conscious choice-making, then I need to stay awake and make more conscious choices.  Which brings us back around to tapas (which I’ve been talking about in recent posts).  Recently, someone used teethbrushing as an example of going on habit, saying we always start in the same quadrant.  Ever since I got my fancy toothbrush, though, I have been consciously choosing to start in different quadrants.  That’s a small practice of staying awake.  And if I think in terms of small practices, I could come up with many more ways to bring myself back to attention by doing something differently than I usually do, even silly things like using my other hand or putting things I use a lot in different places.  It might even be fun to see how long it takes for the new habit to develop and for me to go back to sleep.

The best part of paying attention isn’t that it’s the “right” thing to do and makes me a “good” person or yogi.  It isn’t even that I might be less wasteful.  It’s that I’m here for my life.  Lately, I’ve been remembering how much I love Mary Oliver’s poems.  Here are the last lines from “The Swans”:  Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?