I did the whole mindfulness of breathing meditation this morning. Usually in the mornings I only do a couple of stages, spend about 10 minutes, or 15 at a maximum. But this morning I awoke shortly before 5. I can’t say I slept through perfectly till then, I woke a couple of times but went straight back to sleep again, which is good enough. When I woke and saw it was nearly 5, I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep again before it was time to get up. I lay for half an hour or so, drifting and thinking, mainly about my novel. Then I got up and did my early morning routine.
I made up my mind to carry on with the meditation until either the tape ended or the alarm went off. The alarm is on my phone, so if I get up before it goes off I have it in my dressing gown pocket. As it happened, the bell rang for the end of the meditation, the tape ended, and then just as I was getting up from my meditation position, the alarm started to go off in my pocket. Perfect timing.
I won’t pretend it was a perfect meditation, any more than I had a perfect night, but I managed to stay reasonably on track, despite a few ideas about my novel (and other things) popping into my head, and now I feel good, even though tired, even though I’m conscious of all the things I have to do. Getting an early start on the day is always good. I want to get the minutes from last week’s meeting done before the one this evening, and as I have to go into town today I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but maybe I will.
Life is no less hectic than it was a few months ago, in fact considerably more so. And I’m not sleeping any better. And there are always times when it feels too much. But I feel better in myself. I do feel I’m coping better, on the whole, dealing with life better than I was.
I was reading AC Grayling’s thoughts on happiness last night. Actually, I read it on Tuesday evening, but I went back last night and had another look. I wrote some of it down in my notebook, and I might post it, probably on Cassandra, but I’ll try and summarise the gist of it. He argues that the view of happiness as ‘contentment’ or ‘satisfaction’ is too passive and negative. This is just what I’ve tried to articulate in the past, but I’ve always felt it makes me sound too weird. He poses the question whether the pursuit of happiness is really the purpose or most important thing in life, and (as you can probably tell from the way the question is posed) concludes against it. For him, the most important thing is the pursuit of knowledge and progress, and happiness appears as the by-product of this. I have a few problems with the word ‘progress’, particularly as it is applied to societies (which is one of the meanings he seemed to be implying), but looked at another way, if it’s used as in the loving kindness meditation (‘may all beings make progress’), I can see the value of it.
I once, many years ago, had an argument with the EMBM when I was saying that I could never be happy because I could never love myself, and he argued in favour of hedonism, saying that if you had enough sex and took enough cocaine, you could forget about the self-love. Up to a point, Lord Copper. But what is it that makes me really happy? What was I saying yesterday? The rush of using my brain.
I could say more. But I’d better make a start on those minutes.