觉察的艺术——作者：mymind——心灵宫殿
I read this novel recently called “On the Calculation of Volume” by Solvej Balle. It’s one of a series of seven books (four released so far) telling the Groundhog Day-like story of an antiquarian bookseller who finds herself living the same day over and over.
Tara Selter can’t escape November 18, and neither can you as the reader – to the point, at least for me, of near tedium. But then something interesting happens. That day starts opening up for Tara as she learns to move forward in her new, extremely limited world. And looking through her lens, so did the everyday for me.
I finished the book one evening and took my dog on a walk, my head still wrapped up in the world of the novel, and looked around my street. What if I was stuck in this one day forever? What hidden portals could I find within the seemingly mundane? Were there details I’d overlooked, anything I hadn’t noticed on this route I’d walked countless times?
And I saw more than I had before: tiny stained glass windows, gargoyles leering playfully from their perches, trees with strangely shaped trunks, a funny name gouged into the sidewalk. My neighbor’s gait became charming. I noted the softness of the air, the pink-gray-blue clouds in the dimming sky. Imagining that evening as though I was stuck in it for infinity, my little block gained more texture.
Books I and II of the series. The author has a fascinating story of her own – she lives on Aero, an island in the Baltic Sea, and thought about this book for 30 years before she publishing the first one. The books have since found a cult following and won the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
This is, ideally, how I’d live my finite little life. And yet I’m not usually noticing and appreciating with such intention. I’m typically walking around looking at the ground, lost in thought about money, or about something embarrassing I said last night at dinner, or about all the useless errands I need to run. The moments of my life ticking down while I rush through it forgetting: attention is all I have.
What we pay attention to opens up. Stare at an ant for an hour and you’ll be enthralled. Dive deep into a subject and you’ll become obsessed. Really tune into a conversation and it will expand. Look around your world and you’ll notice beauty and detail you walked by a thousand times before.
This is the kind of intentionality we’re trying to encourage with mymind. We want it to be a tool that doesn’t steal your attention, but rather sharpens it. It should encourage you to look closer at things and consider their meaning vs. blindly scrolling and accepting whatever the algorithm serves you. To navigate the internet with the same mindfulness I felt walking down my block after finishing my book.
Look at the crazy melting shape of this tree trunk on my street
Our co-founders had that vision from the start, and one of them (Tobias) told me about a moment that touched him the other day. There’s a motorcycle shop next door to our office, and he passed through on his way in that morning. The guy who runs the shop had all his tools set out, and the sun was coming through the very dirty, milky windows at an angle, dust sparkling. Tobias said “hey Mark,” and immediately turned around, grabbed his camera and took a photo.
Afterward, Mark looked around the shop and said, “I’ve been here for years. People are constantly coming and going, and nobody’s ever looked at the room the way you just did. But now that you point it out, I can see it. It’s really beautiful.”
Noticing is a gift. It’s also a skill you can hone.
Our lives are what we pay attention to, and we miss so many things. But when you set out to look closer, it all sharpens into focus: the sweet little moment when two strangers smile at each other through a deli window. The way the tulips in your neighbor’s garden droop over in the rain. The endearing way your partner’s eyebrows twitch when they’re reading a book.
Maybe we shouldn’t be living every day like it’s our last, but more like it’s the only day we get to live, over and over and over and over again.
Look around! Look closer! What have you missed?