Stop scrolling and live in the moment
Humans have become mindless dopaminechasing zombies, doomscrolling from one tiny brain-dead piece of content to the next. Never happy where they are and always wanting something else.
Outside in the real world, relationships, tranquility and the best years of people’s lives slip away in the wake of wasting time. According to Hugh Van Cuylenburg, founder of The Resilience Project, when we look up from our devices, the emotion we are most likely to experience is regret.
At the opposite end of the attention spectrum, I recently spent an hour lying on a table in a pergola on a beach in Fiji. It was a completely analogue experience and I was content and entertained the entire time.
When I stood at the end, the best way to describe my state of mind was — happy. There was a small sniff of regret in the emotional mix too. At one point, I went to sleep and dribbled on the foot of the lovely young lady attending to me. I felt bad about that, but the rest was all positive.
Many Kiwi males shy away from the quiet time you experience with peaceful activities such as health massages. We worry we will get bored. We worry about spending too much time inside our heads, listening to that internal chattering voice hassling us about where we are in life. Relaxation lasts only seconds before our minds demand we check our phones, eat or do anything other than the thing we are enjoying right now.
Our modern existence encourages us to continually think about the next thing, no matter how good we currently have it. It doesn’t matter if it’s golf, a swim, a conversation with a person we love or a one-hour couples massage on a beach in Fiji; wherever we are, our thoughts are elsewhere.
As neuroscientist Sam Harris put it in his book, Waking Up: “Everything we want to accomplish — to paint the house, learn a new language, find a better job — is something that promises that, if done, it would allow us to finally relax and enjoy our lives in the present. Generally speaking, this is a false hope.”
Recently I’ve had success fighting the urge to move on, using low-level mindfulness training. Learning to “live in the moment” from time to time, allows you to enjoy non-digital activities. I was trying to avoid the cliche “live in the moment” here.
When someone tells me to live in the moment, I want to do anything other than live in the moment, just to annoy them. It sounds particularly vacuous when the person telling you to live in the moment is referencing the happiness they just experienced on a fancy Fijian vacation.
But living in the moment can be as unpretentious as listening to the person you are with.
Fijians are known for their incredible hospitality and sense of humour. At the Hilton Fiji Beach Resort and Spa, electric carts take you along the paths to the various pools and activities.
You could sit in the back, scrolling Instagram people pretending to have lives or worry about pointless things or you could start a conversation with the driver. Asking questions and learning about other people is one of the most enjoyably present things you can do at any given moment. If you get your average Fijian talking, you’ll want to stay on the “Bula Bus” for another round.
But how do you get better at zoning in on life? Over the last few years, I have been experimenting with meditation. Sam Harris’ Waking Up app is bloody good, but there are thousands of other classes, books and online tutorials you can easily access.
You don’t need to master mindfulness to improve your life. Ten minutes a day, and you quickly strengthen your ability to focus on the now in everyday life. You get better at riding out your desire to move on or think about the next thing.
You are in the middle of an incredible massage in the happiest location you can imagine, and a thought appears telling you to grab your phone and look up who played Olga of the Birch Forest* in the grim but excellent 2022 Viking movie The Northman. With a bit of mindfulness training, you can simply observe that thought, watch it dissolve, then allow yourself to focus back on the easy Fijian sea breeze, the soft hands working away on your inner thighs, or anything making you happy at the moment. Good times.
* It was Anya Taylor-Joy. You might know her from the Queen’s Gambit.
I looked her up later, on the bog.