Psychologically Speaking

with Stewart Hase

Being mindful of others

I was busy at work one day recently. My head full of chatter. Must do this, must do that. Why hadn't I done this, had done that? Do this, do that. A usual sort of day that most of us experience. While furiously working through my emails, and spending half my time deleting spam (I remember when spam was a type of pressed meat in a tin!) I came across a message from a friend who lives overseas. I recognised the name of course but it was the title of the email that caught my attention, Messages of Hope.

The email consisted of five stories that described my friend's experiences of hope in her life. They were deeply moving stories, one of which told of the time in her life when her husband was killed at work. She described how her four children amazingly provided her with hope on the day of the funeral in the way they managed their grief. Another story told of two illiterate, immigrants with very poor English language skills working as cleaners in a hospital. It told how these women would talk to the very sick, and give them hope by listening and caring, because they understood suffering and pain.

Simple stories but they really grabbed my attention. The chattering in my head about this and that just subsided and I absorbed myself in the beauty of what I was reading. A wonderful interlude. What startled me most was how easy it is to get caught up with this chatter and not focus really on anything at all, particularly the simple beauty that surrounds us. I often use the Buddhist notion of mindfulness to describe the silencing of that infernal internal chatter that prevents us from being present in the moment.

How often are we listening to our spouse or our child but not listening at all? The chatter in our head about what we need to do next or what happened earlier in the day fills our mind and means we cannot give our full attention. Do it often enough and the person we are not listening to will eventually give up. How often are we so anxious about how we look, what others will think, or whether whatever we are doing will work out that we do not enjoy the moment?

Recently when diving I suddenly, for no reason at all, started thinking about sharks. Suddenly it was difficult to focus my attention and fully enjoy the wonderful coral I was looking at. Or rather not looking at!

Being mindful is much harder than it seems because many of us have made a habit of listening to our internal chatter. Try to taste fully the food you are eating or experiencing completely whatever it is you are experiencing. Give your fullest attention to someone you are having a conversation with. Really listen. It's difficult but it will transform your relationships. And it becomes easier to see the beauty that exists all around us, if we just look.