A Personal Meditation on the Overlooked
“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”
— Henry David Thoreau, WaldenI’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, how we’re always doing something. Scrolling, replying, running errands, checking notifications, planning the next step in our lives. There are no breaks in the modern way of life. Sometimes even when we try to slow down, our minds are still running at the same speed.
The weird part? Most of the time, I don’t even know what I’m chasing. This feeling is probably universal, right? (unless you’re totally unhinged, in which case… congrats?) Like you’re ticking off boxes, but you’re not sure where that list came from in the first place?
The other night I sat on my porch just for a few minutes with no phone, no agenda. Just sitting. I noticed the wind in the trees, a neighbor’s dog barking, the way the air felt a little cooler than usual. It wasn’t dramatic. No thunderbolt revelations. But I felt present in a such a way that it was almost a miracle.
Moments like those have made me realize that we were never built to be machines.
Yes, working hard has it’s place. But not all the time.
And definitely not at the cost of being alive to your own life.
I’ve made an effort to treat slower days and slower moments as the essential times they are. The little things, those things that give life its flavor (like smiling at someone in the morning, or the way your tea smells, or the color of the sky) are just as much a part of life as the big things we constantly chase.
The slow moments are where you digest the rest of your life.
So next time you’re wondering what to do, consider:
There’s nothing harmful in slowing down.
The answer isn’t always to do more.
Maybe it’s ok to pause.
To breathe.
To do “nothing.”
Because maybe that’s where everything is.
Mason Lai 