Every now and then I feel it: my forehead is filled with fog, there's tension in my chest and it seems as if not enough air is blowing through my lungs. I know that I've let the sneaky tyranny of the day overrule me yet again. And so I've made choices driven by ‘doing’ and not by ‘being’. That I've let myself be swallowed up by the illusory speed, urgency and chaos of things. The short-term pleasure of ticking off yet another little thing on the list and hopping straight on to the next, proud that I'm busy-busy-busy and so I must be important. The illusion that the more I do, the more I belong. Blast it all ...
And every single time I'm amazed at how strong the patterns in my brain are. How they pull me into that same trap again and again. How, the moment my attention to being slackens even a little, they slip in that cold void of doing-doing-doing and settle stubbornly into the compulsion of things that ‘have to be done now’. Only to be rewarded with stress, or in other words: ‘my forehead is filled with fog, there's tension in my chest and it seems as if not enough air is blowing through my lungs’.
And every single time I say to myself: “Aha! Keep training! We're not there yet.” My little prefrontal cortex needs practice. Because breaking those stubborn behaviour patterns takes time, dedication and perseverance. It takes making short work of the lusty survival goals of the oldest parts of my brain: a fat bite to eat, a fat wallet, top status and sex with the alpha male. And no pain! And belonging to the group! How exhausting.
So: train that brain to escape the sneaky will of my primitive instinct. Train to take the reins myself and, instead of following my primitive lusts, make real Ikigai choices. Being choices.
Ikigai is Japanese for
‘having a purpose in your life
that guides you through your life
and encourages you to create beauty and usefulness
for yourself and the people around you.’
First for ‘yourself’. Only when you then still have something left to give away do the others get their turn. That's the order.
And so when, 400 words ago, I once again felt my forehead filled with fog, the tension in my chest and the sense that not enough air was blowing through my lungs, I trained my brain with the following question:
‘If you only had this one day, what would you do first?’
And I wrote 400 words, took my love firmly by the hand and led him into the woods. A breeze blew the fog from my forehead, the scent of the moss softened the tension in my chest again, and my love and I breathed in the most beautiful plans for the future together.
