At a section break in an essay on composite poems, and because I had just finished my morning coffee, I stopped reading and got up to brush my teeth. Because I had just finished my coffee, I first took the mug into the kitchen where instead of brushing my teeth (which is why I got up in the first place), I started doing the dishes. As I sudsed the knife, the fork, the spoon from last night, the mug from last night, the mug from this morning, I thought about a period of time in August of 2019 when I painted an ensō every day. An ensō is a symbol in Zen Buddhism. It’s a circle that represents both completeness and incompleteness, perfection and imperfection. It is “traditionally drawn using only one brushstroke as a meditative practice in letting go of the mind and allowing the body to create.” As part of that practice, I was deliberate and singularly focused on my actions. I methodically gathered and arranged my supplies (paint, paint brush, paper). I paused and focused. I painted. The process never took more than a few minutes, but it was a few minutes in which there was only one focus. I wrote about my practice here.
As I moved the sponge in a circular motion around my breakfast plate, I contemplated these two very different scenarios: methodically painting a circle vs. reading and stopping to brush my teeth but instead doing the dishes and thinking about how I seemingly have little control over my thoughts while also hearing all of the other intrusive thoughts (I should go for a run soon, and it is a good essay on poetry, and I was supposed to be brushing my teeth, and maybe this could be a composite poem titled the distracted nature of our modern minds…).
I am, or have become, acutely aware of how scattered I can be. I’m never sure if this is new, or if I’ve always been scattered and have gotten better at listening to the various impulses. I’m never sure if other people experience this, and to what degree. At random times throughout the day, I’ll think about how I’d like to get better at being more methodical and purposeful in my actions. Slowing down to think about each thing and only that thing. At random times throughout the day, I’ll feel a strange and strong desire to be methodical and singularly focused in everything I do. I’ll want to treat the mundane with exquisite care – as though every step in the process (of brushing my teeth or doing the dishes or opening the blinds) should be slow and deliberate and handled as though it were the most important thing on the planet.
Of course, I don’t do any of that – or I do very little of it. Modern life doesn’t facilitate that type of thinking and I’m not sure how beneficial it would be. I suspect the dishes and my teeth would be cleaner if my thoughts were focused solely on those tasks as I was doing them, but who knows, maybe getting lost in thoughts about other things would result in cleaner teeth and dishes. I can already see the cartoon playing – a cartoon dog starts to brush his teeth (or do the dishes); a thought bubble appears; different things like chasing sticks and riding in cars appear in the thought bubble; in the background, day turns to night turns to day again; in the final scene the dog is hold a nub of a tooth brush and his teeth have been brushed down to nothing (or the sponge is far smaller and the plate now paper thin).
I suspect the desire to be methodical is more about the desire to discipline my mind… more about the desire to not be in my default mode. Walking through my days the way I do – which is an “ooh look, squirrel” kind of distraction is easy. It requires no thinking whatsoever. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but sometimes, I want to ensure, or at least play with the idea, that I can do things differently. That maybe I can finish the essay without getting up to brush my teeth, or that if I do get up to brush my teeth I don’t get sidetracked by the dishes… that maybe if I think about these things the way I did in painting the enso, I’d be deliberate in how I reached for the toothbrush and carefully measured the toothpaste and counted the strokes…