This morning I realised something. Lately, I’ve taken an active approach to taking note of what stimulates my mind. Not so much what it is the stimulation but more how it stimulates my mind. Meaning, with the things that I consume already and on a daily, how do they consume my mind? This morning, driving to work, I decided to give the house a break and listen to hip-hop.
I love hip-hop. I consider myself an old-school hip-hop head. But this morning I was listening to newer acts. Hip Hop is fun. The new songs are designed to entice and activate every cell in your brain. Also, new songs follow a short-play format so that they can be viral sounds on Reels and Tik Tok. Even old heads like Nas and Lloyd Banks release new songs with one or no chorus that are less than 2 mins, 2 and a half max.
So, what happens when you listen to these new songs is the equivalent of drinking high energy mentally stimulating shots. My drive to work is about 48 minutes and can get to an hour with traffic. 48 minutes equates to about 20 – 24 of these high-energy songs. Fundamentally, there’s nothing wrong with it. 20 to 24 songs to pump you for the day and get you going is okay. However, this is what I noticed when I got to work.
My ability to concentrate was affected. In most cases, I wouldn’t notice this but lately, I’m on the active path to enhance my concentration and focus. I am paying careful attention to the things that are taking my concentration. This morning I found myself struggling to concentrate. I opened an ebook and got bored. I began writing in my notebook but my thoughts were everywhere. I looked up a video on YouTube but got bored too. In my mind, the high energy from the songs was still vibrating.
Over the weekend, I took the time to meditate and reduce the amount of stimulation I was receiving. It’s interesting that in contrast to how I was feeling this morning, over the weekend my mind was calmer. And not only calmer, but more focused. I could hone in on one object. Everything seemed slower. And not in a boring kind of way but in a sense that I could embrace each moment as it occurred. Even something mundane as a kettle boiling water could capture my attention.
Whilst meditating, an image of a calm lake filled my mind. The key to mindful meditation is to allow whatever thought that comes to mind to come and go as it pleases. The key is to not control it. So, when this lake rested in my mind, I felt it symbolised that moment. Shortly after, my mind thought of a drop that would land on this lake. This drop would cause a ripple that would dance on the lake’s surface. That ripple would soon disappear into the lake.
I realised that the calmness of the mind can be represented as the calmness of that lake. When the mind is calm, any disruption that can alter its state can and will be absorbed by the calmness of the mind. However, when the mind is a raging cyclone caused by high-energy stimulation like high-energy music, mindless TV or any such stimulation, the mind can’t absorb the disruption. Like a cyclone or tsunami, the disruption only makes the mind more violent and destructive.
Perhaps that’s why people lose their patience in traffic because our minds are not calm. So many things occupy our minds. Of these things, we are so used to them occupying our minds we no longer question whether they should in the first place. It’s like being in a home that has too many boxes. No matter how neatly you organise them and move them around, they still occupy your space. It is only when we take the time to open each box and discard what’s useless and keep what’s useful will the home be neat and clear.
The same applies to our minds. Maybe that’s why the older we get, the less noise, movies or TV we want to engage in. There is already so much in the mind that we do not want to add more to it. But in any case, what we allow into our minds usually has the power to make a home for itself in it. It is our decision if we want something that occupies space for the sake of occupying space like a vase with no flowers, or we want something that occupies space for the sake of occupying space like flowers in a vase. That is our decision.
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